s>v'  — 

*  APR  8  1908  * 


A 


■0fifCAL 


BT  15  ,G7  1907 

Gore,  Charles,  1853-1932. 

The  new  theology  and  the  old 
religion 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 

AND 

THE  OLD  RELIGION 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/newtheologyoldreOOgore 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 

AND 

THE  OLD  RELIGION 

BEING  EIGHT  LECTURES,  TOGETHER  WITH  FIVE 

SERMONS 

V 

BY  CHARLES  GORE,  D.D.,  D.C.L. 

BISHOP  OF  BIRMINGHAM 


NEW  YORK 

E.  P.  DUTTON  AND  COMPANY 


1907 


PRINTED  BY 

HV2ELL,  WATSON  AND  YINEY,  LD.r 
LONDON  AND  AYLESBVRY, 
ENGLAND. 


PREFACE 


This  volume  consists  mainly  of  the  sub¬ 
stance  of  lectures  delivered  in  the  Cathedral 
of  Birmingham  at  the  midday  services  in 
Lent  of  this  year.  The  lectures  were  de¬ 
livered  only  from  notes,  and  were  not  com¬ 
pletely  reported.  They  have  therefore  been 
written  entirely  afresh,  with  amplification 
and  rearrangement.  They  are  now  in 
eight,  instead  of  six,  portions.  But  I  have 
still  called  them  lectures,  as  they  retain  the 
form  and  manner  of  lectures. 

I  have  added  some  sermons  preached  on 
other  occasions.  This  involves — in  the  case 
of  the  first  three  sermons — some  repetition, 
which  I  hope  will  be  forgiven,  as  I  thought 
that  the  point  of  view  of  each  of  the  ser¬ 
mons  was  sufficiently  different  from  that  of 
the  lectures  to  justify  its  preservation  ; 
and  they  amplify  and  expand  points  of 
importance. 


v 


VI 


PREFACE 


I  do  not  endeavour  in  these  lectures  or 
sermons  to  discuss  the  great  psychological 
or  metaphysical  questions  which  occasion¬ 
ally  come  near  to  the  surface  :  e.g.  the 
psychological  question  of  the  manner  in 
which  we  are  to  suppose  that  the  human 
subject,  the  prophet  or  the  common  man, 
becomes  conscious  of  a  divine  communica¬ 
tion  ;  or  the  metaphysical  question  of  the 
legitimacy  of  restating  the  substance  of  such 
communications,  believed  to  be  divine,  as 
intellectual  propositions,  valid  for  the  whole 
area  of  human  knowledge.  But  I  am  sure 
that  God,  the  Father  of  spirits,  has  really 
conveyed  true  and  coherent  impressions  of 
Himself  to  the  human  spirit,  through  the 
medium  of  the  common  conscience  and  of 
specially  susceptible  individuals,  called  pro¬ 
phets,  who  have  been  the  enlighteners  of 
the  common  conscience ;  and  I  am  sure  that 
these  impressions  of  God  legitimately  appear 
in  the  intelligence  of  men  as  convictions  of 
truth  :  and  therefore  are  legitimately  ex¬ 
pressed  as  propositions  for  the  intellect  which 
have  an  equal  claim  to  express  reality  with 
propositions  based  upon  the  observation  of 
nature. 


PREFACE 


Vll 


I  am  sure  also  that  the  self-disclosure  of 
God  which  reached  its  culmination  in  J  esus 
Christ  is  final,  and  that  by  the  very  neces¬ 
sity  of  the  case.  That  is  to  say,  if  Jesus 
Christ  is  God  incarnate,  no  fuller  disclosure 
of  God  in  terms  of  manhood  than  is  given 
in  His  person  is  conceivable  or  possible.  1 
believe,  therefore,  that  we  need  to  hold  fast 
the  distinction  between  the  revelation  as 
once  given  through  the  prophets  and  in 
Jesus  Christ,  and  the  dogma  which  protects 
this  revelation,  or  the  theology  which 
elaborates  and  seeks  to  harmonize  it  with 
the  whole  of  knowledge.  My  object  in 
these  lectures  is  mainly  to  make  plain, 
as  against  the  assumptions  of  the  New 
Theology,  the  substance  of  the  original 
revelation  as  it  touches  the  nature  of  God, 
of  sin,  of  Christ,  &c. 

I  think  the  movement  called  the  New 
Theology  is  a  highly  important  movement. 
Mr.  Campbell  has  fastened  upon  certain 
tendencies  of  thought  which  have  been  long 
at  work  amongst  us,  and  brought  them  for¬ 
ward  into  the  arena  of  common  and  popular 
discussion.  I  have  tried  to  follow  him  into 
this  arena,  and  to  show  the  fundamental 


Vlll 


PREFACE 


incongruity  of  his  leading  ideas  with  the 
original  Christian  revelation,  and  the  essen¬ 
tial  superiority  of  the  ideas  which  the  Chris¬ 
tian  revelation  really  contains. 


St.  Luke’s  Day,  1907. 


C.  Birmingham  : 


CONTENTS 

LECTURES 

I.  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  .... 

II.  THE  OLD  RELIGION  .... 

III.  THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD  . 

IV.  THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 

V.  THE  MEANING  OF  CHRIST’S  DIVINITY 

VI.  MIRACLES . 

VII.  THE  ATONEMENT  AND  THE  INSPIRA¬ 
TION  OF  SCRIPTURE 

VIII.  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND  THE 

CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  . 

ix  b 


PAGE 

I 

19 

42 

60 

84 

109 

131 

150 


X 


CONTENTS 


SERMONS 

I.  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  . 

II.  THE  PERMANENT  CREED 

III.  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

IV.  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS  OF  CHRIS¬ 

TIANITY  . 

V.  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR 

APPENDIX 

REPORT  ON  THE  MORAL  WITNESS  OF  THE 


PAGE 
1 8 1 

205 

231 

251 

274 


CHURCH  ON  ECONOMIC  SUBJECTS 


297 


LECTURES 


LECTURE  I 

THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 

There  is  no  doubt  that  we  are  passing 
through  a  period  of  unsettlement  in  reli¬ 
gious  beliefs.  Some  men  are  unsettled 
because  they  have  seriously  tried  to  ‘  think 
for  themselves  ’ :  that  is,  to  grapple  with 
fundamental  religious  problems,  philosophi¬ 
cal  or  critical — such  problems  as 

Hover  on  the  bounds  of  mortal  ken, 

And  have  perplexed,  and  will  unto  the  end 
Perplex  the  brains  of  men — 

such  problems,  I  mean,  as  that  of  the 
compatibility  of  human  freedom  with  uni¬ 
versal  law  or  the  divine  foreknowledge.  A 
person  of  ordinary  intelligence  and  ordinary 
occupation  can  receive  a  creed,  and  test 
its  working  value  in  experience,  and 
satisfy  himself,  more  or  less  fully,  on  its 
historical  grounds,  and  distinguish  well 
enough  between  what  is  reasonable  and 

i 


2 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


what  is  superstitious ;  but  it  is  very  few 
of  us  who  can  give  ourselves  up  to  the 
impartial  speculative  consideration  of  ulti¬ 
mate  and  fundamental  problems  in  meta¬ 
physics  or  in  criticism  with  any  other 
result  but  mental  bewilderment.  The  diffi¬ 
culty  of  the  subjects  in  themselves  and  the 
variety  of  the  opinions  entertained  upon 
them  by  competent  leaders  of  thought  are 
equally  causes  of  this  bewilderment. 

It  is  not  more  than  the  plain  truth  to  say 
that,  in  the  sense  of  really  obtaining  an 
independent  opinion  worth  having  on  the 
fundamental  questions  of  religion,  very 
few  of  us  are  qualified,  by  capacity  or 
training,  to  ‘  think  for  ourselves.' 

But  also  very  few  seriously  attempt  it. 
And  an  Englishman  who  has  possession  of  a 
conviction  which  he  thinks  he  holds  on  solid 
practical  grounds — a  good  working  creed 
— is  not  very  easily  disturbed  by  speculative 
doubts.  He  is  not  easily  *  afraid  of  any 
evil  tidings.'  But  there  are  a  great  many 
people  whose  convictions  on  religious  sub¬ 
jects  are  very  far  from  solid.  They  would 
confess  that  they  have  very  little  religious 
experience,  or  perhaps  spiritual  sensibility. 
They  do  not  read  more  on  such  subjects 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


3 


than  a  newspaper  review  or  a  magazine 
article.  Thus,  when  they  hear  of  every 
traditional  belief  being  questioned  by  men 
of  apparent  learning  and  integrity,  their 
convictions,  such  as  they  were,  even  on 
quite  fundamental  subjects,  are  quite  under¬ 
mined.  How  shall  they  decide  where 
learned  men  disagree  ? 

Again,  there  are  others — and  those  a 
great  number — who  are  disgusted  by  the  un¬ 
worthiness  of  the  Christianity  which  they 
see  around  them.  They  are  alienated  by 
the  divisions  among  us  Christians,  by  our 
bitterness  or  pettiness,  or  by  the  worldliness 
of  orthodox  believers.  The  Christian 
churches  seem  to  them  to  make  no  serious 
struggle  against  the  forces  which  enslave 
masses  of  men  in  social  and  moral  degrada¬ 
tion,  and  to  exhibit  no  real  likeness  of  Jesus 
of  Nazareth.  A  great  many  men,  that 
is  to  say,  disbelieve  in  current  Christianity 
because  they  desire  something  more  like 
Jesus  Christ. 

And  there  are  others  who  hold  their  reli¬ 
gious  convictions  piously  and  fervently,  and 
who  yet  add  to  the  prevailing  scepticism  : 
for  they  are  distressed  because  questions 
are  even  raised  about  subjects  of  such 


4  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 

sanctity.  They  resent  altogether  the  atmo¬ 
sphere  of  free  inquiry,  and  by  their  nervous¬ 
ness  and  apparent  distrust  of  the  power 
of  truth  to  prevail  in  the  open  field,  they 
do  more  than  they  suspect  to  propagate 
the  opinion  that  the  Christian  religion  is 
an  old-fashioned  superstition  which  cannot 
bear  investigation. 

In  such  an  age  of  religious  unsettlement 
it  is  as  well  to  remember  that,  after  all,  it 
is  to  ages  of  such  mental  ferment  as  ours, 
and  not  to  ages  of  mental  stagnation,  that 
we  owe  our  great  debts  of  gratitude  for 
the  works  of  religious  construction.  It  was 
from  an  age  of  universal  intellectual  fer¬ 
ment  and  unsettlement  that  there  emerged 
the  solid  structure  of  the  catholic  creeds ; 
it  was  in  an  atmosphere  of  serious  un¬ 
settlement  that  Butler  and  others  in  the 
eighteenth  century  relaid  the  intellectual 
foundation  on  which  Wesley  and  Simeon 
and  Pusey  and  Newman  built  their  works 
of  spiritual  recovery.  If  religion  is  ‘  the 
pearl  of  great  price  ’  we  must  not  expect  to 
win  it  cheaply,  and  intellectual  trouble  is 
no  more  to  be  resented  than  pain  of  body. 

The  reason  of  contemporary  unsettle¬ 
ment  is  not  hard  to  find.  Within  the  last 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


5 


century  our  ordinary  intellectual  categories 

J  J  O 

— that  means  those  large  headings  under 
which  we  think  of  things,  those  broaci 
assumptions  which  we  carry  into  life  to 
enable  us  to  hold  together  all  our  wide 
and  manifold  experience — those  intellectual 
categories  have  been  changed.  For  in¬ 
stance,  the  dominance  of  the  conception 
of  evolution — the  conception,  that  is,  of  the 
universe  with  all  its  forms  of  hfe  and  all 
its  mode  of  thought  as  being  in  a  ceaseless 
process  of  change — and  the  opening  out 
of  the  almost  infinite  vistas  of  time  in  the 
process  of  the  world’s  development ;  and 
more  recently  the  breaking  up  of  the  idea 
of  solid  matter  into  something  elusive 
and  unimaginable — such  new  modes  of 
thought  have  had  a  profound  effect  upon 
the  human  imagination,  accustomed  till 
quite  recently  to  regard  the  various  kinds 
of  things  as  stable  and  fixed,  created  a  few 
thousand  years  ago  to  be  what  they  have 
been  ever  since.  The  change  wrought  in  the 
imaginations  of  men  is  as  great  as  when  they 
first  found  out,  three  centuries  ago,  that  this 
world  was  not  the  centre  of  the  universe, 
that  there  was  no  heaven  over  our  heads 
and  no  hell  under  our  feet.  No  one,  in  fact, 


6 


T1IE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


can  appreciate  in  any  measure  the  change 
in  our  conceptions  of  the  physical  universe 
since  Butler’s  day,  since  the  day  which 
saw  the  rise  of  the  Evangelical  or  even  of 
the  Tractarian  movement,  without  feeling 
that  a  convulsion  in  the  religious  world 
also  must  have  taken  place  ;  that  it  could 
hardly  have  been  possible  for  a  religion 
associated  as  ours  was  with  the  old  ideas 
of  nature,  to  be  detached  from  these  and 
readjusted  to  the  new  science  without  a 
great  deal  of  mental  disturbance.  And  the 
changes  which  have  taken  place  in  historical 
criticism  since,  shall  I  say,  Hume  wrote 
his  History  of  England  have  hardly  been 
less  considerable  than  the  change  in  physical 
science.  I  say,  then,  that  a  religion  accus¬ 
tomed  to  the  old  intellectual  world  could 
not  learn  to  be  at  home  in  the  new  without 
very  deep  and  wide  religious  unsettlement. 
The  task  which  we  have  got  to  accomplish 
is  that  of  going  back  upon  our  foundations, 
of  distinguishing  what  is  essential  and 
permanent  and  really  catholic  in  our  religion 
from  what  belongs  only  to  some  more  or 
less  temporary  phase  of  thought,  or  arrange¬ 
ment  of  society,  or  some  more  or  less  local 
association  of  belief  and  circumstance. 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  7 

These  really  essential  and  permanent  and 
catholic  principles  and  institutions  of  the 
Christian  faith  have  to  be  detached  from 
the  decaying  order,  or  the  mode  of  thought 
which  has  become  antiquated,  and  set  to 
work  afresh  to  prove  their  vitality  in  the 
new  order,  and  to  show  their  capacity  to 
make  a  new  home  for  themselves  in  a 
modern  world  of  thought  and  life. 

In  doing  this  there  are  two  classes  of 
persons  who  have  to  be  resisted — the  one 
conservative  and  the  other  revolutionary. 

There  are  those  who  seem  to  think  that 
in  dangerous  days  such  as  these  our  only 
course  is  to  hold  fast,  with  an  even  blind 
adhesion,  to  our  religion  as  it  was  handed 
down  to  us,  unrevised  and  uncriticized. 
They  meet  any  demand  for  an  abandonment 
of  an  old-fashioned  view,  not  by  asking 
whether  the  view  was  essential  to  our  faith, 
but  by  an  appeal  to  us  ‘  not  to  puzzle  the 
minds  of  the  young,’  or  by  the  assertion 
that  what  was  good  enough  for  their 
fathers  is  good  enough  for  them.  To 
allow  mistakes  in  current  teaching  is  stig¬ 
matized  as  ‘  dangerous  ’  ;  concession  is 
declared  to  be  only  a  prelude  to  surrender, 
and  parleying  to  savour  of  treason. 


8 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


On  the  other  hand,  you  have  the  people 
who  seem  to  think  that  every  clever  new 
criticism  is  destined  to  triumph  over  an 
established  position.  They  forget  that 
the  revolutionists  of  history  are  always 
disappointed ;  that  counter  reformations 
follow  reformations  ;  that  old  ideas  have 
a  wonderfully  recuperative  power.  They 
forget  also  the  very  recent  history  of 
biblical  criticism.  Let  us  listen  to  Dr. 
Harnack’s  recent  observations  in  his  work 
Luke  the  Physician.1 

This  book  must  be  subjected  to  a  separate  and 
stringent  examination — so  the  critics  demand  ;  but 
this  examination,  so  they  say,  is  already  completed, 
and  has  led  to  the  certain  conclusion  that  tradition 
is  here  in  the  wrong — the  Acts  cannot  have  been 
composed  by  a  companion  and  fellow-worker  of 
St.  Paul.  .  .  .  The  indefensibility  of  the  tradition 
is  regarded  as  being  so  clearly  established  that  nowa¬ 
days  it  is  thought  scarcely  worth  while  to  prove  this 
indefensibility  afresh,  or  even  to  notice  the  arguments 
of  conservative  opponents.  Indeed,  it  seems  that 
there  exists  a  disposition  to  ignore  the  fact  that  such 
arguments  still  exist.  Julicher  feels  compelled  to 
regard  the  ascription  of  the  book  to  St.  Luke  as  a 
‘  romantic  ideal.5  So  quickly  does  criticism  forget 

1  Luke  the  Physician  (Engl,  trans.,  Williams  & 
Norgate,  1907),  pp.  6  f. 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  9 

its  true  function,  with  such  bigoted  obstinacy  does 
it  cling  to  its  hypotheses. 

But  in  spite  of  this  consensus  of  ‘  critical  ’ 
authority,  Harnack,  whom  no  one  can 
accuse  of  conservative  prejudices,  surveys 
the  evidence,  and  pronounces  without  hesi¬ 
tation  in  favour  of  St.  Luke’s  authorship  of 
the  whole  book  of  the  Acts,  as  well  as  of 
the  third  Gospel.  And  no  doubt  he  repre¬ 
sents  the  tendency  of  critical  investigation, 
at  least  in  England.  To  be  conservative 
in  criticism,  then,  is  not  always  to  be  wrong. 

What  we  need  is  frankness  of  mind.  In 
any  settled  period  the  permanent  faith 
becomes  encrusted  with  more  or  less 
temporary  elements,  the  gold  becomes 
mixed  with  dross  ;  and  when  a  turn  of  the 
wheel  of  thought  takes  place  we  must  have 
the  intellectual  courage  to  seek  to  dissoci¬ 
ate  the  permanent  from  the  impermanent, 
to  draw  distinctions  between  essential  and 
accidental,  to  make  concessions  and  to 
seek  readjustment. 

Is,  then,  the  settlement  proposed  by  ‘  the 
New  Theology  ’  the  right  one  ?  The  New 
Theology  is  a  convenient  name  for  a 
current  mode  of  thought  which  in  its 
teaching  about  God  lays  the  greatest  stress 


IO 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


upon  what  is  called  the  ‘  divine  imma¬ 
nence  ’  in  nature  and  man,  which  regards 
God,  that  is,  not  as  the  sovereign  lord 
and  judge,  but  as  the  universal  Spirit 
manifesting  Himself  in  all  things  and  all 
men  ;  which  accepts  most  unreservedly  the 
idea  of  development  in  nature  and  human 
history  ;  which  assimilates  Christ  to  other 
men  as  being  essentially  the  same,  and  only 
the  same,  in  nature  ;  which  proposes  a  less 
grave  estimate  of  sin  ;  which  disparages  or 
repudiates  miracles  in  God’s  revelation  of 
Himself.  I  might  point  to  many  writers 
as  more  or  less  representing  this  school ; 
I  must  make  special  reference  to  its  most 
popular  author,  the  Rev.  R.  J.  Campbell.1 
But  you  will  find  no  better  exponent  of  this 
tendency  than  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  and  no 
manual  which  exhibits  it  in  so  favourable 
a  light  as  his  catechism  The  Substance  of 
Faith  allied  with  Science .2 

The  New  Theology  is  one  result  of  the 
breakdown  of  the  old  materialism,  and 
the  kind  of  agnosticism  represented  by 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer.  For  we  are  living  in 
a  period  of  reaction  from  ‘  naturalism  ’  of  all 

1  The  New  Theology  (Chapman  &  Hall,  1907). 

2  Published  by  Methuen. 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  II 

kinds.  Science,  it  is  now  perceived — that  is, 
the  investigation  of  the  facts,  sequences,  and 
laws  observable  in  nature — is  not  complete 
in  itself,  nor  is  it  man’s  only  method  of 
arriving  at  truth.  It  is  not  complete  in 
itself,  for  it  starts  from  assumptions.  It 
assumes  the  universal  order,  with  all  its 
forces  at  work,  of  the  origin  of  which  it  can 
give  no  account.  And  it  is  not  our  only 
method  for  arriving  at  truth.  Account 
must  be  taken  of  other  faculties  :  the 
consciousness  of  self,  the  conscience  of 
right  and  wrong,  the  will,  the  heart,  the 
imagination,  the  spiritual  faculties  of  man. 
These  too  bear  a  valid  testimony.  They 
are  real  means  of  access  to  reality.  Thus 
experimental  science,  by  all  its  methods 
of  inquiry,  may  discern  neither  God,  nor 
freedom,  nor  immortality  ;  but  they  may 
be  realities,  credible  or  certain,  nevertheless. 
It  is  enough  that  the  deliberate  and  proved 
verdicts  of  science  should  be  accepted  with 
the  reverence  due  to  them,  and  given  their 
lofty  place  in  the  whole  of  human  know¬ 
ledge  and  belief. 

But  it  is  with  the  whole  of  human  ex¬ 
perience  and  knowledge  and  belief,  and 
not  only  with  the  conclusions  of  science, 


12 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


that  philosophy  and  religion  in  different 
ways  are  concerned.  And  the  free  and 
comprehensive  thought  of  philosophy  ap¬ 
pears  in  our  day  to  be  reverting  very 
generally  to  a  spiritual  interpretation  of 
the  universe.  This  I  believe  to  be  the  case 
both  in  Europe  and  America.1  In  France 
there  is,  I  am  informed,  a  noticeable  revival 
of  the  intellectual  authority  of  Pascal,  which 
would  mean  a  recognition  of  the  strict 
limitation  of  the  sphere  of  science,  properly 
so  called,  and  an  open  door  for  reasonable 
faith.  What  is  plain  to  see  is  that  there 
has  in  quite  recent  years  been  a  remarkable 
group  of  distinguished  men  of  letters  in 
France — Brunetiere,  Huysmans,  Bourget, 
Coppee,  Verlaine,  Rette — who  have  been 
converted,  and  have  proclaimed  their  con¬ 
version,  from  extreme  hostility  to  religion, 
to  enthusiastic  and  devoted  membership 
in  the  catholic  church.  This  has  arrested 
the  interest  of  Europe.2  In  England  the 

1  See  G.  Villa,  Idealismo  moderno  (Turin,  1905),  pp. 
425ft.,  and  A.  B.  D.  Alexander’s  History  of  Philosophy 
(Maclehose,  1907),  pp.  583-8. 

2  ‘  Les  futurs  historiens  de  notre  litterature  a  la  fin 
du  xix.  siecle  seront  forces  de  reconnaitre,  par  exemple, 
que  Brunetiere,  le  grand  critique,  le  puissant  dialecticien, 
que  Bourget,  le  penetrant  romancier,  1' excellent  peintre 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


return  to  faith  of  the  distinguished  biologist 
George  Romanes  on  grounds  which  received 
an  incomplete  but  very  interesting  statement 
in  his  fragmentary  Thoughts  on  Religion 1  has 
been  followed  more  recently  by  a  simi¬ 
lar  return  described  by  Mr.  George  Palmer, 
in  his  Agnostic's  Progress.1  And  I  fancy 
that  the  progress  and  recovery  described 
in  these  books  is  typical  of  a  very  general 
tendency,  so  far  at  least  as  the  acceptance 
of  a  spiritual  view  of  the  world  is  concerned. 

Sir  Oliver  Lodge’s  Substance  of  Faith  allied 
with  Science  is  not  of  course  in  agreement 
with  the  Apostles’  Creed  on  all  points,  and 
I  am  proposing  to  subject  its  phrases  in 
certain  respects  to  criticism.  Nor,  again, 
would  its  author  claim  to  have  any  mandate 
to  speak  for  scientific  men  as  a  whole. 
But  it  is  a  representative  work.  And  we  are 
entitled  to  call  out  into  clear  light  the 
fact  that  a  distinguished  representative  of 
science  can  produce,  as  ‘  consistent  with  the 

de  la  societe  moderne,  que  Huysmans,  le  rare  et  precieux 
artiste  en  style,  que  Verlaine,  le  poete  delicieusement 
naif,  malgre  ses  egarements,  furent  des  catholiques — 
et  des  catholiques  qui,  tous,  sont  revenus  a  la  foi  apres 
1’ avoir  longtemps  oubliee  ou  perdue  ’  (Frangois  Coppee, 
in  his  preface  to  Adolphe  Rette’s  Du  Diable  a  Dieu). 

1  Published  by  Longmans. 


i4 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


teachings  of  science  in  its  widest  sense,  as 
well  as  with  those  of  literature  and  philo¬ 
sophy/  1  so  unhesitating  a  proclamation 
of  a  spiritual  creed,  such  strong  affirmations 
of  God  and  immortality  and  freedom 
and  the  value  of  prayer,  and  the  real  com¬ 
munion  of  man  with  other  spiritual  beings 
whom  he  cannot  see  but  must  believe  to 
exist.  As  Sir  Oliver  has  allied  himself  with 
the  New  Theology,  and  as  I  have  the 
intention  of  criticizing  him,  it  is  a  pleasure 
first  of  all  to  express  admiration  for  the 
beauty  of  temper,  the  reverence  of  spirit, 
and  the  careful  constructive  skill  of  ex¬ 
pression,  which  mark  his  work.  And  I 
am  venturing,  at  this  point,  to  quote  at 
length  his  ‘  creed/  his  definition  of  moral 
freedom,  and  his  plea  for  a  right  kind  of 
agnosticism  in  place  of  a  wrong. 

I  believe  in  one  infinite  and  eternal  Being,  a 
guiding  and  loving  Father,  in  whom  all  things  consist. 

I  believe  that  the  Divine  Nature  is  specially  re¬ 
vealed  to  man  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord,  who 
lived  and  taught  and  suffered  in  Palestine  1900  years 
ago,  and  has  since  been  worshipped  by  the  Christian 
Church  as  the  immortal  Son  of  God,  the  Saviour  of 
the  world. 

I  believe  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  ever  ready  to 
1  The  Substance  of  Faith  allied  with  Sceince ,  p.  5. 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


15 


help  us  along  the  way  towards  goodness  and  truth  ; 
that  prayer  is  a  means  of  communion  between  man 
and  God ;  and  that  it  is  our  privilege,  through 
faithful  service,  to  enter  into  the  life  eternal,  the 
communion  of  saints,  and  the  peace  of  God.  1 

For  our  present  purpose  we  regard  the  sense  of 
conscience  [in  man]  as  the  most  important  and 
highest  characteristic  of  all, — the  sense  of  responsi¬ 
bility,  the  power  of  self-determination,  the  building  up 
of  character,  so  that  ultimately  it  becomes  impossible 
to  be  actuated  by  unworthy  motives.  Our  actions 
are  now  controlled  not  by  external  impulses  only, 
but  largely  by  our  own  characters  and  wills.  The 
man  who  is  the  creature  of  impulse,  or  the  slave  of 
his  passions,  cannot  be  said  to  be  his  own  master, 
or  to  be  really  free  :  he  drifts  hither  and  thither 
according  to  the  caprice  or  the  temptation  of  the 
moment ;  he  is  untrustworthy,  and  without  solidity 
or  dignity  of  character.  The  free  man  is  he  who  can 
control  himself,  who  does  not  obey  every  idea  as  it 
occurs  to  him,  but  weighs  and  determines  for  himself, 
and  is  not  at  the  mercy  of  external  influences.  This 
is  the  real  meaning  of  choice  and  free  will.  It  does 
not  mean  that  actions  are  capricious  and  undeter¬ 
mined  ;  but  that  they  are  determined  by  nothing 
less  than  the  totality  of  things.  They  are  not  deter¬ 
mined  by  the  external  world  alone,  o  that  they  can 
be  calculated  and  predicted  from  outside  ;  they  are 
determined  by  self  and  the  external  world  together. 
A  free  man  is  the  master  of  his  motives,  and  selects 
that  motive  which  he  wills  to  obey.2 

1  ibid.,  p.  96.  2  ibid.,  p  27. 


1 6  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 

We,  insignificant  creatures,  with  senses  only  just 
open  to  the  portentous  meaning  of  the  starry  sky, 
presume — some  of  us — to  deny  the  existence  of 
higher  powers  and  higher  knowledge  than  our  own. 
We  are  accustomed  to  be  careful  as  to  what  we  assert  ; 
we  are  liable  to  be  unscrupulous  as  to  what  we  deny. 
It  is  possible  to  find  people  who,  knowing  nothing 
or  next  to  nothing  of  the  universe,  are  prepared  to 
limit  existence  to  that  of  which  they  have  had  ex¬ 
perience,  and  to  measure  the  cosmos  in  terms  of  their 
own  understanding.  Their  confidence  in  themselves, 
their  shut  minds  and  self-satisfied  hearts,  are  things 
to  marvel  at.  The  fact  is  that  no  glimmer  of  a  con¬ 
ception  of  the  real  magnitude  and  complexity  of 
existence  can  ever  have  illuminated  their  cosmic 
view.1 

The  position  represented  by  the  New 
Theology  is  of  course  to  be  differently 
estimated  when  it  is  proposed  to  us,  or  as  it 
is  proposed  to  us  in  these  extracts,  from  the 
side  of  science,  and  when  it  is  advocated, 
in  other  terms,  by  ministers  of  the  catholic 
creed,  or  of  Nonconformist  bodies  who 
have  been  identified  with  the  same 
fundamental  belief.  In  these  latter  cases 
it  represents  an  abandonment  of  specific 
beliefs  which  it  will  be  the  business  of  these 
pages  to  show  to  be  really  integral  to  the 


1  The  Substance  of  Faith ,  etc.,  p.  63. 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  17 

creed  of  Christendom.  In  these  cases,  I 
say,  it  represents  abandonment,  and  not  pro¬ 
gress.  But,  viewed  as  an  advance  from  the 
side  of  science,  I  desire  at  starting  to  give 
the  warmest  welcome  to  so  spiritual  a  creed. 

The  author  of  The  Substance  of  Faith , 
and  those  who  think  with  him,  are  not  infre¬ 
quently  quoted  as  authorities  in  virtue  of 
what  they  doubt  or  deny — or  are  supposed 
to  doubt  or  deny — whether  it  is  the  fall  of 
man,  or  the  real  occurrence  of  miracles,  or 
the  deity  of  Christ.  To  those  who  are  dis¬ 
posed  thus  to  quote  them,  I  would  suggest 
this  consideration. 

The  belief  of  most  of  us  must  be  largely 
influenced  by  authority.  The  authority 
which  ought  to  make  the  greatest  and  most 
reasonable  impression  upon  our  minds  is 
the  corporate  and  age-long  authority  of  the 
witnessing  church.  That  represents  the 
widest  and  largest  spiritual  experience. 
And,  short  of  that,  we  must  reasonably  be 
influenced  by  the  authority  of  any  indi¬ 
vidual  whose  learning  and  character  com¬ 
mend  his  judgement  as  trustworthy.  But 
it  is  surely  unworthy  to  defer  to  the  autho¬ 
rity  of  any  one  for  what  he  denies,  or  is  sup¬ 
posed  to  deny,  and  to  refuse  it  for  what  he 

2 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 


iS 

maintains.  A  man,  in  fact,  is  much  more 
likelv  to  be  mistaken  in  what  he  denies  than 
in  what  he  affirms.  What  he  affirms  is  what 
he  realizes.  What  he  denies  may  be  only 
what  he  fails  to  realize. 

To  any  doubter,  then,  whom  I  can 
reach  who  is  supposed  to  refer  for  his  doubts 
to  the  authority  of  the  New  Theology,  I 
would  say  first  of  all  :  You  are  rejecting 
what  these  men  reject,  but  are  you  be¬ 
lieving  what  they  believe  ?  After  all,  if 
you  hold  and  practise  the  creed  which  has 
just  been  quoted,  you  will  not  be  indeed 
in  the  full  stream  of  the  church’s  belief,  but 
you  will  at  least  be  within  sight  of  the  city 
of  God. 


LECTURE  II 

THE  OLD  RELIGION1 

A  living  theology  must  always  in  a  sense 
be  a  new  theology.  For  theology,  rightly 
understood,  is  not  the  same  thine:  as  religion, 
or  as  the  revelation  on  which  religion  rests, 
or  the  dogmas  which  it  maintains.  But  it 
is  the  attempt  of  the  intellect  of  men  to 
express  their  religious  belief  in  intellectual 
forms  and  to  bring  it  into  harmony  with 
the  thought  of  their  time — with  all  truth 
so  far  as  it  is  known.  But  the  New 
Theology  which  we  are  concerned  with 
is  characterized  (as  I  shall  endeavour  to 
show)  by  a  very  inadequate  respect  for  the 
old  religion  which  it  seeks  to  reinterpret, 
and  indeed  by  a  very  inadequate  apprecia¬ 
tion  of  its  principles  and  its  history.  It  is 
an  attempt  of  the  contemporary  intellect 

1  The  subject  of  the  chapter  is  dealt  with  again  from 
a  somewhat  different  point  of  view  in  Sermons  i  and  ii, 
pp.  1 8 1 ,  205. 


19 


20 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


to  express  the  truth  about  God  and  man 
as  seems  best  to  it,  with  very  little  regard 
to  the  experience  of  the  past.  It  has  the 
marks  of  the  contemporary  intellectual 
workshop  all  over  it. 

But  the  speculative  intellect  of  any  epoch 
is  of  itself  very  fallible,  as  experience  has 
shown  ;  and  religious  continuity  is  of  ex¬ 
treme  importance.  Thus  the  theology  of 
the  time  should,  as  it  seems  to  me,  start 
from  at  least  a  serious  and  respectful  con¬ 
sideration  of  the  old  religion,  the  Christian 
religion  which  claims  to  rest  upon  a  real 
revelation  or  self-disclosure  of  God,  once  for 
all  given  in  the  person  of  J  esus  Christ ;  which 
claims  to  be  a  catholic  religion,  for  all  men 
and  for  all  time. 

I  propose,  then,  having  given  some  ac¬ 
count  of  the  New  Theology,  to  proceed  to 
give  some  account  of  the  idea  and  method 
of  the  old  religion.  It  is,  of  course,  as  you 
would  all  recognize  at  once,  the  claim  of 
Christianity  to  proclaim  a  catholic  faith — 
that  means  a  religion  for  all  men,  which 
will  satisfy  and  embrace  all  men  and  all 
kinds  of  men,  and  last  for  all  time.  The 
first  part  of  this  description  of  catholicity, 
that  it  is  adequate  for  all  races  and  kinds 


THE  OLD  RELIGION  21 

of  men,  introduces  a  very  interesting  sub¬ 
ject,  with  which  I  do  not  at  present  propose 
to  deal.  What  I  am  concerned  with  is  the 
second  part  of  that  description,  the  perman¬ 
ence  which  is  claimed  for  the  Christian 
faith.  4  Heaven  and  earth  shall  pass  away, 
but  My  words  shall  not  pass  away/  The 
Christian  church  came  out  at  once  into  the 
world  claiming  to  proclaim  a  message  from 
God,  a  self-disclosure  of  God,  which  had 
been  made  in  many  parts  and  many  man¬ 
ners,  slowly  and  gradually,  and  which  in 
the  person  of  Jesus  Christ  had  been  made 
in  its  final  form  as  far  as  this  world  was 
concerned ;  so  that  there  could  be  no 
disclosure  of  God  to  man  more  perfect,  or 
adequate,  and  no  disclosure  of  what  was 
possible  for  manhood  in  relation  to  God 
more  complete,  than  was  given  in  the  person 
of  Jesus  Christ,  Himself  God  and  man. 

Here,  of  course,  at  the  very  threshold  of 
our  statement,  you  are  confronted  with  a 
surprising  claim,  which  gives  you  occasion 
to  be  critical.  You  naturally  feel  that  this 
is  a  very  changing  world.  Things  become 
antiquated ;  forms  of  thought  pass  and 
change.  How,  then,  can  it  be  reasonable 
to  suppose  that  a  revelation  couched  in 


22 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


human  language,  a  revelation  enshrined 
in  human  formulas,  can  be  permanent  in 
a  world  as  changing  as  our  world  is?  Here, 
then,  arises  an  important  question.  Does 
the  whole  of  our  human  nature  change, 
even  slowly  ?  or  is  it  the  case  that  under¬ 
neath  what  is  changing,  underneath  what 
develops  and  grows,  there  is  such  a  tiling 
as  a  permanent  humanity,  a  humanity  in 
which  the  nineteenth  century  and  the  first 
century  are  as  one,  which  through  the 
changes  of  the  ages  remains  in  its  wants  and 
capacities,  speaking  practically,  constant 
and  unchanged  ?  You  will  remember  how 
the  poet  Wordsworth  speaks  of  another 
poet,  Burns,  and  gives  it  as  his  merit  that 
he  appeals  to  the  general  heart  of  man — 

Deep  in  the  general  heart  of  men 
His  power  survives. 

You  will  recognize  that  a  great  deal  of 
the  pleasure  which  students  find  in  ancient 
literature  lies  in  the  recognition  of  this 
common  manhood  ;  so  that  we  can  shake 
hands  across  the  ages  with  some  one  who 
lived  long  ago,  under  conditions  socially 
and  intellectually  altogether  different  from 
our  own.  You  find,  for  instance,  some 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


words  of  Homer  come  to  you  with  a  quite 
fresh  force  and  power  of  entrancing  delight, 
simply  because  they  make  you  feel  the 
reality  of  that  ‘  general  heart  of  man  ’ 
which  is  something  that  under  all  changes 
remains  constant.  And  if  it  makes  a  really 
catholic  poetry  possible,  it  may  make  also 
a  catholic  religion  possible,  a  religion  that 
will  appeal  to  the  same  humanity  in  the 
nineteenth  century  and  in  the  first. 

Let  us  look  closer  into  the  matter.  Re¬ 
ligion  appeals  to  a  certain  set  of  spiritual 
needs  and  faculties  which  undoubtedly  exist 
in  human  nature  wherever  you  find  it. 
Any  one  examining  human  nature  with 
a  merely  scientific  curiosity  would  see  that 
the  soul  of  a  man  moves  out  in  different 
directions.  It  moves  out  towards  nature 
to  appropriate  its  resources  ;  and  it  moves 
out  towards  other  men  to  knit  together  the 
bonds  of  society.  Herein  lies  the  progress 
of  civilization.  But  there  is  another  move¬ 
ment  which  is  also  universal — that  is,  the 
movement  out  towards  God,  the  feeling 
after  Him  and  finding  Him.  Of  that  move¬ 
ment  of  human  nature  towards  God  what 
are  the  characteristics  ?  It  is  at  bottom 
an  aspiration  tovnrds  God,  a  craving  which 


24 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


exists  in  man  for  divine  fellowship  and 
eternal  life,  a  life  which  is  beyond  and 
deeper  than  the  changes  and  chances  of 
our  own  every-day  life.  This  craving  is 
rooted  in  a  profound  sense  of  need,  and  of 
the  weakness,  the  transitoriness,  the  fragility 
of  human  life.  With  this  sense  of  need 
there  is  the  sense  of  sin,  of  the  pollution, 
the  unworthiness,  the  rebellion,  which  pre¬ 
vent  this  human  nature  of  ours  from 
finding  the  free  access  towards  God  which 
it  desires.  With  this  again  there  is  the 
desire  for  pardon  and  peace  and  recon¬ 
ciliation.  And,  mingling  with  this  instinct, 
which  is  in  effect  the  instinct  of  prayer 
and  communion  with  God,  there  is  also 
the  sense  of  kinship  and  fellowship  with 
our  fellow  men  with  whom  we  desire  to 
enter  into  this  communion  with  God,  not 
as  individuals,  but  as  members  of  the 
human  family.  Now  I  ask — Do  not  these 
things  belong  precisely  to  that  humanity 
which  is  through  all  classes  and  in  all 
periods  identical,  so  that  we  should  find  no 
difficulty  in  looking  for  a  classical  and 
perfect  expression  of  these  fundamental 
religious  wants  far  back  across  the  ages  ? 

Where  can  we  find  it  ?  I  reply,  in  the 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


25 


Psalms.  I  say  to  any  one  who  will  apply 
his  mind  to  think  about  this  subject,  Can 
you  conceive  any  better  expression  of  those 
fundamental  human  wants  than  you  get 
in  the  Psalms  ?  There  are  things  in  the 
Psalms  which  are  not  at  all  of  this  permanent 
and  satisfying  character.  There  are  impre¬ 
cations  upon  the  enemies  of  Israel,  or  upon 
the  enemies  of  the  individual  friend  of  God, 
which  express  something  lower  than  a 
Christian  level  of  feeling.  If  the  Church 
of  England  were  not  so  conservative  of 
doubtful  and  dangerous  things  as  well  as 
of  good  things,  I  fancy  it  would  not  have 
these  imprecations,  which  require  so  much 
explanation,  recited  in  the  public  services. 
But  much  more  readily  there  come  into 
your  minds  passages  of  the  Psalms  expres¬ 
sive  of  all  the  feelings  I  have  enumerated ; 
and  I  ask  you,  Is  there  anything  in  that 
expression  of  those  fundamental  religious 
wants  which  you  feel  could  be  better — 
which  you  feel  is  antiquated  ?  Do  you  not 
simply  find  there  the  expression  of  exactly 
what  mankind  everywhere,  in  the  twentieth 
century  after  Christ  as  much  as  in  the 
sixth  century  before  Christ,  feels,  and 
wants  ? 


26 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


The  Old  Testament  is  confessedly  imper¬ 
fect.  In  the  Old  Testament  we  find  human 
nature  gradually  being  trained  to  know 
its  own  true  wants,  as  well  as  to  receive 
the  word  of  God  which  was  gradually  being 
spoken  to  satisfy  those  wants.  There  are 
then,  I  say,  imperfections  which  we  perceive 
in  the  Psalms,  as  we  look  back  upon  them 
in  the  light  of  Christ's  perfection,  as  well 
as  obscurities,  where  the  true  sense  cannot 
be  recovered.  But  the  bulk  of  the  Psalms 
expresses  the  soul's  fundamental  search  for 
God  in  all  its  moods  and  phases  of 
triumph  and  depression,  in  all  its  exultant 
joy  and  its  profound  misery.  The  twenty- 
third  psalm,  ‘  The  Lord  is  my  Shepherd  ’  ; 
the  twenty-fifth,  ‘  Unto  Thee,  O  Lord, 
will  I  lift  up  my  soul  ’ ;  the  twenty-seventh, 
‘  The  Lord  is  my  light  '  ;  the  thirtieth, 
‘  I  will  magnify  Thee,  O  Lord  '  ;  the  thirty- 
first,  ‘  In  Thee,  O  Lord,  have  I  put  my 
trust  ’ ;  the  thirty-eighth,  ‘  Put  me  not  to 
rebuke,  O  Lord  ’ — these  are  only  instances 
which  could  be  multiplied  till  almost  all 
the  Psalms  were  named.  Here,  so  far  as 
expression  of  the  fundamental  want  is 
concerned,  is  permanent  religion.  Here 
is  the  humanity  which  underlies  all  develop- 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


2  7 


ments.  Here  is  the  explanation  of  a 
catholic  religion.  For  it  is  to  this  religious 
consciousness,  thus  brought  to  full  and 
conscious  expression,  that  the  revelation 
of  Christ  appeals  :  and  it  can  be  permanent 
because  it  gives  a  full  satisfaction  to  a 
permanent  want. 

Now  I  get  to  my  next  point.  The  Chris¬ 
tian  revelation,  which  is,  or  claims  to  be, 
the  permanent  response  of  God  to  the 
permanent  human  need,  quite  certainly 
appeals,  not  primarily  to  the  intellect,  but 
primarily  to  what  in  the  Scripture  is  called 
the  heart,  which  means  not  only  the 
emotions,  but  the  personality  :  the  whole 
central  self — which  moves  out  in  action 
and  expresses  itself  in  thought  and  feeling, 
but  which,  as  it  were,  lies  below  both  in¬ 
tellect  and  feeling  and  action.  Our  religion 
appealsto  the  central  self — the  heart  of  man. 

I  want  to  impress  this  upon  you  if  I  can. 
You  will  remember  that  striking  scene 
where  our  Lord  is  represented  as  saying  : 
‘  I  thank  thee,  Father,  Lord  of  heaven 
and  earth,  because  Thou  hast  hid  these 
things  from  the  wise  and  prudent,  and  hast 
revealed  them  unto  babes.’ 1  The  meaning 

1  Matt.  xi.  25,  Luke  x.  21. 


28 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


of  this  saying  becomes  apparent  if  you 
read  the  Gospels  as  a  whole.  The  ‘  wise 
and  prudent  ’  among  the  Jews  were  the 
rulers  and  rabbis  and  scribes ;  and  the 
great  centre  of  their  authority  and  their 
traditional  learning  was  in  Jerusalem.  If 
you  read  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  you  will 
find  that  our  Lord  gave  the  wise  and 
prudent  in  Jerusalem  their  chance,  and 
that  they  would  not  accept  Him.  They 
were  occupied  with  the  traditions  of  their 
schools  and  the  pride  of  their  order,  and 
this  lay  teacher,  as  He  seemed  to  them, 
was  despised  and  rejected  ;  they  would  not 
hear  Him.  Then  the  narrative  of  the 
Synoptic  Gospels,  the  narrative  of  our 
Lord’s  teaching  in  Galilee,  represents  the 
fresh  start  which  He  made  in  a  new  field. 
Galilee  was  a  great  and  crowded  mercantile 
district,  with  a  population  of  very  mixed 
origin — ‘  Galilee  of  the  Gentiles/  It  was 
about  twice  the  size  of  the  diocese  of 
Birmingham,  and  Josephus  ascribes  to  it 
about  four  times  its  population.  There 
may  be  an  exaggeration  here — such  ex¬ 
aggerations  are  common  in  ancient 
chronicles  ;  but,  at  any  rate,  he  must  have 
meant  to  describe  a  highly  populous  dis- 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


29 


trict.1  There  our  Lord  proclaimed  Himself 
to  the  miserable  and  diseased,  in  works  of 
mercy.  But  He  found  His  real  hearers  and 
chose  His  disciples  among  what  we  should 
describe  as  the  well-to-do  artisan  class, 
men  who  were  neither  subject  to  the 
temptations  of  luxury  nor,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  the  corrupting  influences  of  pauper¬ 
ism  ;  men  who  could  pray,  ‘  Give  us  day 
by  day  our  daily  bread/  who  depended 
on  their  daily  toil  for  their  sustenance ; 
but  who  were  under  no  conditions  such 
as  are  corrupting  and  degrading.  There, 
among  men  who  had  no  tradition  of  learning, 
but  were  sensible,  practical,  whole-hearted 
men,  He  found  His  hearers  and  chose  His 
disciples.  These  He  here  calls  ‘  babes/ 
simple-minded  men  and  women,  by  contrast 
with  the  more  sophisticated  men  who  held 
the  chief  places  in  the  schools  of  learning. 
Observe,  He  says  :  ‘  I  thank  thee,  Father.' 
It  is  not  merely  that  He  puts  up  with  an 
inevitable  condition,  but  He  recognizes 
that  the  strength  of  His  religion  lies  in 
the  fact  that  it  appeals  to  the  average 
man,  with  his  average  intelligence,  with 

1  Edersheim,  Life  and  Times  of  Jesus  the  Messiah 
(Longmans),  ii.  p,  224  (Bk.  ii.  cap.  ix). 


30  THE  OLD  RELIGION 

his  average  human  wants,  and  not  pri¬ 
marily  to  the  intellect  of  the  schools.  St. 
Paul  found  out  and  gloried  in  just  the 
same  thing.  He  approached  the  learned 
at  Athens  and  he  went  away,  as  it  seems, 
in  bitterness  of  spirit  ;  his  visit  produced 
almost  no  result.  Then  he  went  to  Corinth 
with  a  determination  that  he  would  not 
have  any  more  of  this  method,  that  he 
would  appeal  simply  to  the  sense  of  sin 
and  the  need  of  a  saviour,  that  he  would 
know  nothing  among  them  save  Jesus 
Christ  and  Him  crucified.  And  he  describes 
the  result.  He  points  out  to  the  Corinthian 
Christians  how  the  people  who  make  up 
their  young  community  are  the  people 
whom  the  world  reckons  of  no  account, 
and  that  the  people  of  importance  are 
almost  left  out ;  and  he  accepts  it  as  being 
the  strength  of  Christianity  that  it  was  to 
make  its  appeal  not  primarily  to  the 
intellect,  but  to  the  needs  of  common  life  ; 
and  he  anticipates,  what  happened  in 
fact,  that  ‘  the  foolish  things  of  the  world  ’ 
would  ‘  put  to  shame  the  things  that  are 
wise/1 

The  method  of  the  Christian  church, 

1  i  Cor.  i.  19  ft. 


THE  OLD  RELIGION  31 

then,  is  not  to  propound  an  argument  and 
say,  ‘  Is  not  this  a  sound  argument  ?  ’  It 
does  not  make  its  appeal  primarily  to  the 
intellect.  It  comes  into  the  world  pro¬ 
claiming  something  which  is  by  its  very 
nature  authoritative — a  message  from  God. 
And  as  God  is  to  man,  the  Creator  to  the 
creature,  the  Father  to  the  child,  so  the 
message  claims  to  be  accepted,  not  indeed 
without  inquiry,  but  still  at  the  last  resort 
in  faith.  The  idea  is  that  of  f  receiving  the 
word  of  God.’  It  is  promised  that  this 
message  will  satisfy  your  souks  felt  and 
experienced  wants,  will  convince  you  of  its 
own  divinity  by  its  applicability  to  your 
need,  will  prove  itself  at  your  heart  so 
that  you  will  find  the  witness  of  its  truth 
in  yourself,  if  you  will  receive  it  in  faith. 
It  is  anticipated  also  that  as  you  set  your 
intellect  to  work,  you  will  find  that,  in 
virtue  of  your  faith,  you  have  a  rational 
account  to  give  of  the  relations  of  God  to 
man,  which  will  prove  better  by  far,  more 
adequate,  and  completer  than  anything 
else  which  you  could  have  got  by  any  other 
way  than  this  way  of  acceptance  in  faith. 

Is  this  method  of  the  old  religion,  this 
initial  claim  upon  faith  —  the  receptive 


32 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


attitude  of  faith — something  which  we  have 
a  right  to  resent  as  unreasonable  ? 

Surely  not.  For,  first,  it  is  the  method 
which,  if  God  be  our  Father,  best  corre¬ 
sponds  to  the  real  relation  in  which  we  all 
equally,  learned  or  unlearned,  stand  to  Him. 
Secondly,  it  is  the  method  by  which  alone 
(as  far  as  we  can  see)  men  of  all  kinds 
and  grades  of  instruction  could  have  been 
combined  or  held  together  in  one  society. 
And,  thirdly,  it  is  the  method  that  has  been 
justified  in  experience.  Christianity  was 
mocked  at  by  the  ‘  intellectuals  ’  in  its 
beginnings  as  ‘  a  religion  for  children  and 
women  and  fools.’  But  not  then  alone 
in  history  the  intellectuals  were  mistaken. 
Christianity  brought  into  the  world  a  higher 
knowledge  of  God  and  of  man,  a  truer 
philosophy  on  the  deepest  subjects,  than 
had  yet  existed.  It  represented  a  profound 
advance,  an  infinitely  fruitful  movement 
onward  toward  truth.  And  the  advance 
came  not  by  way  of  intellectual  speculation, 
but  through  men  accepting  a  divine  message 
in  faith,  and  only  afterwards,  when  they 
had  realized  its  divinity  by  its  experienced 
results,  thinking  about  its  intellectual  mean¬ 
ing.  Men  understood  by  first,  in  a  measure, 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


33 


laying  aside  their  criticism  and  simply 
believing.  I  think  that  in  many  of  the 
great  forward  movements  of  human  life  it 
is  not  the  speculative  intellect  which  has 
been  the  real  pioneer.  It  has  been  the 
pressure  of  instinct,  the  felt  need  for  ex¬ 
pansion  in  the  heart  of  man,  which  has 
shown  the  way.  I  believe  that  psychology 
is  coming  more  and  more  to  recognize  that 
the  rationality  of  man  lies  not  only  or  per¬ 
haps  chiefly  in  his  self-conscious  intellect, 
but  as  much  or  more  in  his  subconscious 
self  or  soul,  with  its  half-dumb  instincts  and 
feelings,  out  of  which  his  intelligence 
springs. 

I  would  venture  to  put  this  in  a  more 
individual  way  to  any  Englishman  who 
shrinks,  as  most  Englishmen  do,  from  the 
very  idea  of  laying  aside  his  critical  faculty, 
even  for  a  time,  and  simply  receiving  a 
message  as  divine. 

What  we  Englishmen  need,  above  other 
men,  is  not  merely  ‘  honest  thinking,’  and 
‘  obedience  to  our  consciences,’  but  the 
enrichment  of  our  souls,  so  that  we  may  have 
both  a  larger  basis  for  thinking  and  a  deeper 
and  fuller  vision  of  duty.  Now  it  was  just 
this  enrichment  of  soul  — of  the  whole  basis 

3 


34 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


of  personality — that  seems  to  have  resulted 
in  the  first  Christians  from  their  simple 
receptiveness.  It  was  because  their  heart 
and  imagination  had  been  thus  enriched 
that  so  vigorous  an  intellectual  as  well  as 
moral  outgrowth  was  apparent.  A  similar 
enrichment,  with  a  similar  outgrowth,  would 
always  be,  and  would  be  for  us  to-day,  the 
result  of  a  similar  receptiveness. 

I  can  imagine  nothing  so  fertilizing  to 
the  intellect  of  an  Englishman  (apart  from 
all  other  considerations)  as  for  him  to  lay 
aside  his  critical  attitude  for  a  time,  and 
simply  put  himself,  as  it  were,  to  school  to 
receive  and  assimilate  the  message  of  the 
faith  from  some  adequate  teacher,  whether 
by  the  written  or  spoken  word.  Thus  he 
would  really  appreciate  and  understand 
the  meaning  of  our  religion  from  within.  If 
he  should  sull  find  it  inconsistent  with  what 
on  other  grounds  he  knows  to  be  true  or 
possible,  his  rejection  of  it,  or  doubt  about 
it,  would  be  at  least  the  rejection  or  the 
doubtful  holding  of  a  faith  which  had 
been  appreciated,  as  it  can  only  be  appre¬ 
ciated,  from  within.  I  am  persuaded 
that  what  renders  our  English  race  com¬ 
paratively  and  generally  unintellectual, 


THE  OLD  RELIGION  35 

is  not  too  much  credulity,  but  too  little 
receptiveness. 

This  is,  then,  what  I  meant  by  the  method 
of  the  old  and  catholic  religion.  It  pro¬ 
claims  a  message  of  God,  a  self-disclosure 
of  God  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ,  ade¬ 
quate  to  satisfy  the  religious  needs  of  men 
for  all  time  ;  which  by  all  men  alike  must 
first  of  all  be  received  as  the  word  of  God, 
in  faith  :  so  that  all  men,  learned  or  un¬ 
learned,  are  thus  first  of  all  put  on  a  level, 
as  simple  receivers  in  faith  of  the  divine 
response  to  human  need.  And  I  put  this 
method  of  the  old  religion  in  contrast  to 
the  method  of  the  new  theology,  which 
approaches  us  as  the  best  product  of  con¬ 
temporary  thought,  trying  to  frame  an 
expression  of  religious  ideas  which  shall  be 
most  acceptable  to  the  intellectual  aspira¬ 
tions  of  the  moment. 

I  am  occupied  now  in  describing  the 
principle  of  the  catholic  religion,  rather 
than  in  giving  its  justification.  But  the 
description  I  have  given  of  the  method  of 
religious  revelation  may  suggest  one  par¬ 
ticular  objection  which  it  may  be  well  to 
meet. 

It  may  be  suggested  that  this  supposed 


36 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


‘  divine  response  ’  is  really  nothing  else 
than  the  reflection  of  human  desires.  It 
was  because  men  felt  the  weakness  and 
bitterness  of  their  lot,  because  they  cried 
out  in  pain  to  the  God  of  their  imagining, 
‘  Wherefore  hast  thou  made  all  men  for 
naught  ?  ’  that,  unable  to  bear  the  ‘  vanity  * 
of  human  life,  they  conceived  false  hopes, 
and  invested  mere  surmisings  with  the 
dignity  of  divine  oracles,  and  finally  came 
to  find  a  revelation  of  God  in  what  was  no 
more  than  a  great  and  good  man’s  life  and 
death.  The  supposed  divine  revelation  is 
no  more  than  the  echo  of  the  human  cry. 

Now  to  this  the  reply  is  twofold  :  First, 
that  it  is  impossible  to  treat  so  vast  an 
aspiration  and  effort  as  the  religious  aspira¬ 
tion  and  effort  of  man  has  been  in  human 
history,  as  if  it  carried  with  it  no  ground  for 
a  belief  that  it  would  be  satisfied.  On  a 
smaller  scale,  indeed,  we  can  recognize  ‘  the 
vanity  of  human  wishes  ’  ;  but  the  most 
permanent  and  universal  tendencies  of 
humanity  represent  man’s  fundamental 
nature.  Such  a  tendency  in  humanity  is 
the  search  after  God — the  feeling  after 
Him,  to  find  Him.  It  is,  then,  we  must  say, 
man’s  nature  to  require  God.  He  strives 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


37 


restlessly  after  Him.  ‘  Unquiet  is  the  heart 
of  man  until  he  rest  in  Him.’  He  expends 
infinite  pains  over  long  ages  and  in  all  lands 
in  the  search  for  God.  If,  then,  there  is  any 
order  or  rational  purpose  in  the  world,  we 
cannot  conceive  of  so  fundamental  and 
universal  a  striving  and  straining  without 
some  real  object  to  stimulate  and  satisfy  it. 
In  some  such  general  sense  as  this,  we  can¬ 
not  help  arguing  from  desire  to  satisfaction. 
But — this  is  the  second  part  of  my  reply — - 
the  response  to  human  need  which  claims 
to  be  divine,  the  message  of  God,  does  not 
for  a  moment  allow  of  our  supposing  that 
it  is  the  reflection  of  human  need.  It  has 
indeed  been  such  as  to  satisfy  human  need 
at  its  best,  but  not  by  any  means  such  as 
men  would  have  desired  or  imagined  for 
themselves.  The  prophets  of  the  Old 
Testament  who  are  the  organs  of  the  word 
of  God,  are  plainly  supplying  not  what 
men  actually  wanted,  but  what  they  ought 
to  have  wanted.  When  to  the  prophets 
succeeded  the  Son,  so  little  did  the  mass  of 
men  want  His  message,  that  they  rejected 
and  crucified  Him.  All  the  wide  and  per¬ 
sistent  degradations  of  which  the  religion 
which  we  claim  to  have  been  revealed  has 


38  THE  OLD  RELIGION 

been  in  history  the  subject,  from  Pharisaism 
downwards,  have  been  due  to  its  being 
accommodated  to  suit  human  instincts  and 
wants,  just  as  they  were,  without  causing 
men  too  much  trouble.  And  in  virtue 
of  such  accommodation  the  religion  has  lost 
its  moral  power.  This  is  one  of  the  most 
impressive  features  of  the  revealed  religion. 
It  is  indeed  a  profound  response  to  the 
experienced  human  need  where  it  is  deepest, 
most  genuine,  and  most  disciplined  ;  but  it 
is  very  far  from  being  the  kind  of  response 
which  mankind,  on  the  whole,  would  have 
desired ;  and  it  is,  therefore,  in  vain  to  argue 
that  it  can  be  the  product  of  the  human 
imagination,  which  in  fact  it  has  had  to  meet 
continually  with  rebuke  and  chastisement. 


But  to  the  human  need  of  God,  at  its 
best  and  deepest,  the  permanent  divine 
response  was,  we  claim,  given  once  for 
all  in  the  Son  of  God,  Jesus  Christ,  in  whom 
God  is  revealed  in  manhood,  and  manhood 
revealed  in  perfect  union  with  Godhead. 

Of  this  revelation,  the  best  and  most 
authoritative  summary  statement  is  given 
in  the  great  catholic  creeds,  the  Apostles' 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


39 


and  Nicene  Creeds,  as  they  are  commonly 
called.  The  Apostles’  Creed,  in  its  earlier 
form — which  does  not  differ  in  any  import¬ 
ant  respect  from  its  present  form — is  the 
expression  given  in  the  earlier  part  of  the 
second  century  to  the  faith  of  the  Church, 
for  the  instruction  of  those  who  were  to  con¬ 
fess  the  faith  in  baptism.  In  the  Nicene 
Creed  you  have  a  similar  baptismal  creed, 
somewhat  expanded,  especially  by  the  in¬ 
sertion  of  the  famous  clause  which  proclaims 
Christ  ‘  of  one  substance  with  the  Father,’ 
that  is,  really  and  truly  divine.  It  happened 
in  the  earlier  part  of  the  fourth  century  that 
a  prominent  Alexandrian  teacher,  Arius,  en¬ 
deavoured  to  introduce  into  Christianity  the 
idea  of  a  demi-god,  an  intermediate  being 
between  God  and  His  creatures.  That  is 
to  say,  he  represented  Christ  as  f  divine,’ 
as  God’s  agent  in  creation  and  redemption, 
and  as  a  being  to  be  worshipped,  but  as 
Himself  fundamentally  a  creature,  and  not 
God.  The  Christian  church  determined 
to  protect  itself  against  so  fundamental 
an  outrage  upon  the  faith  which  Christians 
had  entertained  from  the  first  about  their 
Redeemer,  and  from  so  manifest  a  relapse 
into  pagan  ways  of  thinking,  and  it  adopted 


40 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


this  protective  phrase,  ‘  of  one  substance 
with  the  Father/  into  its  creed. 

These  creeds,  then,  I  propose  to  take  as  the 
classical  expression  of  the  catholic  religion, 
having  supreme  authority  among  Christian 
statements  of  our  faith.  When  I  say  that 
they  have  supreme  authority  to  represent 
the  Christian  church  and  Christianity  I  am 
not  speaking  of  the  authority  of  councils, 
or  of  ecclesiastical  officers  who  may  have 
imposed  them,  but  I  am  speaking  of  a 
deeper  and  more  fundamental  sort  of 
authority — the  authority  of  the  whole 
Christian  body.  There  is  in  those  creeds 
the  whole  mind  of  Christendom.  Before 
the  Reformation  and  after  there  have  been 
various  schools  of  thought  in  Christendom, 
and  great  differences  of  opinion  and  sharp 
controversies,  and  permanent  divisions,  but 
I  think  we  may  say  that  practically  what¬ 
ever  has  been  nobly  suffered  or  worthily 
done  in  the  name  of  Christ  throughout 
the  ages,  has  been  done  in  the  name  of 
that  faith  in  God,  three  in  one,  and  in  the 
incarnation  of  the  eternal  Son,  which  you 
find  confessed  in  the  Apostles’  and  Nicene 
Creeds.  You  know  the  famous  phrase, 
quod  semper ,  quod  ubique,  quod  ab  omnibus — 


THE  OLD  RELIGION 


41 


that  which  has  been  held  always,  every¬ 
where,  and  by  all  within  Christendom.1  If 
that  phrase  applies  to  anything,  it  applies 
to  what  is  contained  in  those  creeds  ;  and 
I  take  them  as  my  standards  of  faith  in 
the  old  or  catholic  religion. 

1  As  interpreted  by  its  author,  Vincent  of  Lerins,  it 
means  what  has  been  believed  among  Christians  from 
apostolic  days,  as  opposed  to  what  originated  at  a  later 
date  ;  and  in  all  parts  of  the  church,  so  that  what  did  not 
hold  it  fell  away  from  the  church  or  was  excluded  ;  and 
as  the  common  faith,  as  opposed  to  the  speculations  of 
individuals.  So  understood,  the  canon  represents  some¬ 
thing  most  real  and  valuable. 


LECTURE  III 

THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

Now  I  am  to  contrast  the  teaching  of 
the  New  Theology  with  the  teaching  of 
the  old  religion  in  certain  crucial  points, 
which  were  enumerated  above/  and  on  which 
the  New  Theology  lays  special  stress.  Of 
these  the  first  is  the  doctrine  of  the 
immanence  of  God — of  God  as  disclosed 
not  otherwise  than  within  nature  and 
within  man. 

God,  says  the  New  Theology,  is  ‘  the 
self  of  the  universe/  and  He  is  ‘  my  deeper 
self  and  yours/  2  ‘  God  is  the  mysterious 

power  which  is  finding  expression  in  the 
universe  and  which  is  present  in  every 
tiniest  atom  of  the  wondrous  whole.  I  find 
that  this  power  is  the  one  reality  I  cannot 
get  away  from ;  for,  whatever  else  it  may 
be,  it  is  myself  /  3  ‘The  real  God  is  the  God 

1  PP‘9*  I0*  2  The  New  Theology,  p.  35.  3  ibid.,  p.  18. 


42 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD  43 

expressed  in  the  universe,  and  in  yourself.’  1 
The  higher  self  of  each  man,  which  is  also 
the  higher  self  of  all  other  men,  the  unit}7 
of  humanity,  is  ‘  in  all  probability  a  per¬ 
fect  and  eternal  spiritual  being  integral  to 
the  being  of  God  ’  “  There  is  no  ‘  dividing 
line  between  our  being  and  God’s.’  3  We 
are  of  one  substance  with  God.  This 
position  is  maintained  more  unreservedly 
by  Mr.  Campbell  than  by  Sir  Oliver  Lodge. 
He  too  tells  us  that  ‘  we  are  a  part  of  the 
universe  and  the  universe  is  a  part  of 
God.’  4  He  too  speaks  of  ‘  the  humanity 
of  God  and  the  divinity  of  man  ’  ;  he  too 
implies  that  each  man  should  be  able  to 
say,  with  Jesus,  ‘  I  and  my  Father  are  one.’ 
But  he  seems  to  leave  more  room  than 
Mr.  Campbell  does  for  the  thought  of  God 
as  self-complete  and  beyond  and  above  the 
universe. 

We  may  say,  however,  without  any  risk 
of  mistake,  that  the  tendency  of  the  New 
Theology  is  to  bring  into  exclusive  emphasis 
the  idea  of  the  immanent  God,  of  God 
in  nature.  Nature  is  one,  and  one  uni- 

1  ibid.,  p.  20.  2  ibid.,  p.  31.  3  ibid.,  p.  34. 

4  Substance  of  Fatih,  p.  43,  and  Hibbert  Journal ,  Apr. 
1906,  p.  53. 


44 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 


versal  Spirit  pervades  it :  this  is  God. 
Nature  is  His  expression  :  and  man’s 
soul  is  a  conscious  spark  of  the  universal 
God. 

Now  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  this  is 
not  new  theology,  but  very  old  theology. 
When  Christianity  came  into  the  world  it 
found  the  civilized  world  full  of  a  religious 
philosophy,  in  part  Platonic,  in  part  Stoic, 
which  held  a  doctrine  substantially  identical 
with  that  of  the  New  Theology.1  W e  cannot 
be  at  all  acquainted  with  the  thought  of 
the  first  and  second  centuries  without 
realizing  that  this  was  the  current  religious 
belief  of  the  educated  world.  For  if  modern 
science  has  given  us  a  much  more  exact 
perception  of  the  methods  and  laws  of  nature, 
it  can  hardly  give  us  a  sense  of  the  unity 
of  nature  and  of  the  all-pervading  Spirit 
more  intense  than  the  ancients  had.  This 


Sense  sublime 

Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 

Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 

And  the  round  ocean,  and  the  living  air, 

And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man  : 

A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels 

1  See  The  New  Stoicism,  by  Professor  Sonnenshein 
( Hihbert  Journal,  Apr.  1907). 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 


45 


All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought, 
And  rolls  through  all  things  — 


is  in  every  age  the  fruit  alike  of  philosophic 
search  and  of  mystical  contemplation. 
Moreover,  leaving  out  of  the  question  for 
the  moment  the  tendency  to  identify  man’s 
spirit  with  this  omnipresent  God,  the  creed 
of  God’s  immanence  in  all  things  is  true, 
and,  as  we  shall  see,  the  Christian  religion 
identified  itself  with  it  and  propagated 
it.  But  for  the  Christian  it  was  not  the 
first  or  most  important  part  of  his  faith 
in  God. 

For  there  came  into  the  world  where 
this  philosophic  creed  prevailed,  amidst  a 
hundred  lovTer  forms  of  faith  and  worship, 
another  thought  of  God,  due  not  to  Greeks 
but  to  Jevrs.  And  the  result  of  our  con¬ 
sideration  will,  I  hope,  be  to  convince 
us  that  ‘  salvation  ’  — the  saving  and  re¬ 
deeming  knoviedge  of  God,  ‘is  of  the  Jews.’ 
To  the  Greeks  w~as  given  the  leadership 
among  men  in  the  w’orld  of  philosophy  and 
the  pursuit  of  beauty,  as  to  the  Romans  in 
the  vrorld  of  government  and  law;  but 
the  Jewish  race  was  called  to  be,  by  its 
prophets,  ‘  the  sacred  school  of  the  know- 


46  THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

ledge  of  God  and  of  the  spiritual  life  for  all 
mankind.’  1 

Not  by  the  way  of  philosophical  con¬ 
templation  and  inquiry,  but  by  a  way  which 
we  call  ‘  inspiration,’  there  was  given  to 
the  Jewish  prophets,  through  their  moral 
conscience,  the  sense  of  God  as  the  righteous 
sovereign  Lord.  He  was  indeed  the  God 
of  nature,  the  creator  and  sustainer  of 
all  that  is,  having  all  power  and  might ; 
but,  above  all,  they  recognized  Him  as  the 
eternally  Righteous  One,  who  had  made 
men  to  serve  Him  in  righteousness  and 
holiness,  and  sat  supreme  above  them,  their 
maker  and  their  judge.  This  doctrine  of 

1  The  phrase  is  St.  Athanasius’s.  A  modern  writer, 
the  great  Ewald,  in  sketching  the  programme  of  his 
History  of  Israel ,  observes  how  ancient  nations  devoted 
themselves  to  special  branches  of  human  attainment  ; 
and  how  in  Israel  ‘  the  aim  is  perfect  religion.  The  aim 
was  lofty  enough  to  concentrate  the  efforts  of  a  whole 
people  for  more  than  a  thousand  years,  and  however 
much  the  mode  of  pursuit  might  vary,  it  was  this  single 
object  that  was  always  pursued  ;  so  that  there  is  hardly 
any  history  of  equal  compass  that  possesses  in  all  its 
phases  and  variations  so  much  intrinsic  unity,  and  is  so 
closely  bound  up  to  a  single  thought  pertinaciously  held, 
but  always  developing  itself  to  a  higher  purity.'  The 
Jew  however  was,  throughout  his  history,  conscious  that 
he  was  not  discovering  God  by  investigation,  but  re¬ 
ceiving  His  disclosure  of  Himself. 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD  4  J 

the  moral  character  of  God — His  essential 
righteousness — is  the  central  idea  of  the 
Old  Testament.  The  sense  of  it  bowed 
men  down  in  utter  humility,  and  made  quite 
impossible  any  identification  of  themselves 
with  God.  It  forced  them  to  think  of  God 
as  the  absolute  creator,  alone  self-existent 
alone  the  object  of  worship;  though  they 
knew  that  He  loved  the  creatures  whom 
He  had  made,  and  admitted  men,  with 
cleansed  hearts  and  reverent  minds,  into 
fellowship  and  communion  with  Himself. 

This  Jewish  thought  of  God  it  was 
which,  in  its  perfect  form,  found  expression 
through  the  lips  of  Jesus  Christ.  All 
modern  critics  of  the  New  Testament 
see  in  our  Lord  the  inheritor  of  the  Jewish 
way  of  thinking  about  God,  though  in  His 
teaching  the  thought  of  God,  as  lord  and 
creator,  finds  its  completion  in  the  thought 
of  Him  as  father,  and  the  idea  of  His 
righteousness  in  the  idea  of  His  love. 
The  disciples  of  Christ  did  indeed,  through 
His  life  and  teaching,  come  to  believe  that 
in  His  person  God  had  come  to  them  in  a 
human  nature,  and  they  believed  in  Him  as 
God’s  eternal  Son  made  man.  But  there 
was  not  even  the  slightest  tendency  to 


48  THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

transfer  the  thought  of  His  deity  to  them¬ 
selves,  or  any  other  man.  No  breath  of 
pantheistic  identification  of  Godhead  and 
manhood  is  felt  in  the  New  Testament. 
Once  more,  through  Christ’s  teaching  and 
His  promises,  and  through  the  performance 
of  His  promises,  they  came  to  believe  in  the 
Spirit  of  God,  who  was  to  come  and  take  men 
up  into  the  most  intimate  fellowship  with 
God.  But,  again,  there  was  not  any  real 
tendency  to  confuse  the  divine  Spirit  with 
the  human  nature.  Rather  the  thought 
of  God,  as  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Spirit, 
yet  one  God,  helped  the  Christian  church 
to  maintain  the  Jewish  idea  of  God  as  per¬ 
fect  and  complete  in  Himself — as  indeed 
loving  to  create  and  to  have  fellowship  with 
His  creatures,  but  as  Himself  in  His  own 
being  perfect,  and  dependent  in  nothing 
upon  the  work  of  His  hands. 

This  is  simply  an  historical  statement  of 
the  religious  heritage  which  wTe  owe  to  the 
Jewys.  Granted  this  belief  in  God,  personal 
and  sovereign  and  complete  in  Himself,  all 
the  truth  of  His  immanence  could  be 
accepted  without  risk  of  confusion  between 
the  creator  and  the  creature.  Already  in 
the  Psalms  it  is  recognized  that  God  is 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD  49 

active  in  nature,  that  His  ‘  breath  ’  is  the 
life  of  nature.1  And  in  St.  Paul’s  teaching 
there  is  the  fullest  recognition  that  ‘  in 
God  we  (men)  live,  and  move,  and  are/  and 
that  in  him  all  things  consist/  or  ‘have  their 
coherence.’  And  this  idea  of  God’s  imman¬ 
ence  which,  as  we  have  seen,  was  prevalent 
in  the  world  into  which  Christianity  came, 
was  taken  up  most  fully  into  Christian 
theology,  and  held  its  place  both  among  the 
Fathers  and  later  among  the  Schoolmen.  It 
would  be  hard  to  exaggerate  the  constancy 
with  which  they  recognize  God  as  active  in 
the  world — its  beauty,  its  order,  its  system, 
its  ‘  persistent  energy,’  the  force  of  nature, 
and  the  light  of  conscience  ;  but  never  for 
a  moment  so  as  to  obliterai  e  or  obscure 
the  primary  belief  in  God  as  alone  self- 
existent  and  independent  and  supreme, 
the  creator  and  lord  and  judge  of  all. 

This  perception  of  the  absolute  difference 
between  the  creator  and  the  creature  came 
into  prominence  through  the  Arian  con¬ 
troversy — already  briefly  described.  In 
Arius’s  conception  Christ  was,  as  it  were,  a 
demi-god :  himself  a  creature,  but  supreme 
over  all  other  creatures,  and  indeed  their 

1  Ps.  civ.  29,  30. 


4 


50 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 


creator  :  a  being,  therefore,  both  creature 
and  creator.  This  conception  the  Christian 
church  absolutely  refused.  Absolutely,  as 
by  an  indomitable  instinct,  it  refused  to 
worship  or  treat  as  God  one  who  was  him¬ 
self  created.  The  highest  archangel,  the 
most  exalted  creature  conceivable,  the 
Christian  church  felt  would  be  no  nearer 
being  God,  than  the  meanest  of  men. 
Between  God,  the  self-existent,  and  any 
created  being,  the  difference  was  pro¬ 
claimed  to  be  absolute.  And  if  Christ  was 
to  be  worshipped,  as  assuredly  He  was,  it 
was  because  He  was,  what  no  created 
person  could  conceivably  be,  ‘  of  one  sub¬ 
stance  with  God.'  1 

Of  course  the  Christian  conception  of 
God  leaves  us  with  many  mysteries  baffling 
cur  eager  scrutiny.  The  relation  of  God’s 
all-embracing  being  and  personality  to  the 
dependent  and  created  personalities  of 
men  remains  profoundly  mysterious. 2  It 

1  See  for  instance,  Athanasius,  Or  at.  c.  Arian.  ii.  20,  and 
cf.  Mozley’s  Theory  of  Development  (Rivington,  1878), 
pp.  74-3 1. 

2  I  cannot  think  that  Dr.  Rashdall’s  recent  book 
( Theory  of  Good  and  Evil ,  ii.  238)  is  on  the  true  line  of 
solution.  In  some  sense  God’s  being  must  surely  be 
all-including,  and  identified  with  the  Absolute. 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD  51 

is  only  one  of  many  mysteries.  The  early 
Christian  church,  living  and  struggling 
to  express  and  defend  its  doctrine,  in  an 
age  of  keen  intellectual  and  philosophical 
speculation,  felt  the  burden  of  the  mystery, 
and  the  inadequacy  of  human  thought  to 
solve  or  words  to  express  it.  But  what 
they  believed  and  relied  upon  was,  they 
felt,  not  a  human  speculation,  but  a  real 
intelligible  self-disclosure  of  God,  made  in 
many  parts  and  manners,  but  made  finally 
in  the  person  of  His  Son.  His  Name,  the 
Name  of  the  Father  and  the  Son  and  the 
Holy  Ghost,  one  God,  creator,  redeemer 
and  sanctifier,  saviour  and  judge,  was  lifted 
above  all  doubt  and  controversy  :  for  He 
had  revealed  it  and  they  had  accepted 
it,  and  found  its  power  in  their  whole 
being. 

To  go  back,  then,  from  this  Christian 
heritage  upon  the  mere  idea  of  divine 
immanence  as  the  Stoics  had  conceived  it, 
is,  I  contend,  to  go  backward,  not  forward. 
The  superiority  of  the  Christian  idea  of 
God  may  be  stated  in  three  ways. 

First  in  its  moral  effect.  The  pantheistic 
or  philosophic  conception  of  God  as  the 
universal  being  of  whose  substance  we  all 


52  THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

form  a  part,  of  whom  we  know  nothing 
except  his  expression  of  Himself  in  nature, 
is  destitute  of  moral  power.  It  leads  to 
a  kind  of  moral  indifferency.  Physical 
nature  is  apparently  altogether  indifferent 
to  moral  distinctions.  It  can  be  explained 
indeed  as  the  handiwork  of  the  good  God, 
and  as  representing  a  stage  in  His  self- 
revealing  and  educative  purpose,  if  once 
we  have  got  from  somewhere  beyond  nature 
the  disclosure  of  His  person  and  character. 
But  if  we  are  left  to  draw  conclusions  from 
nature  we  shall  arrive  at  no  clear  conception 
of  divine  righteousness  ;  and  if  we  include 
human  nature,  we  shall  still  be  bewildered 
by  the  strange  mixture  of  good  and  evil, 
which  seem  to  wage  an  uncertain  struggle, 
or,  very  often,  a  struggle  in  which  the  good 
appears  to  be  defeated.  If  manhood  be 
identical  with  godhead,  we  must  ask,  is  God 
more  good  than  bad  ?  or  is  He  becoming 
better  as  the  generations  pass  ?  And  if 
the  human  spirit  be  only  an  element  in  the 
All  which  is  God,  is  it  the  element  which 
is  dominant  ?  Or  will  it  not  rather  be 
swallowed  up  in  the  sea  of  non-moral 
forces  which  is,  to  all  appearance,  so  much 
vaster  than  humanity  ? 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD  53 

Till,  I  say,  we  have  got  our  disclosure 
from  beyond  nature,  and  beyond  man, 
we  have  got  no  ground  for  the  worship  of 
an  absolutely  righteous  God,  or  for  the 
sense  of  responsibility;  or  for  the  striving 
after  purity  and  love.  In  history,  the 
philosophic  pantheism,  such  as  prevailed 
in  the  world  into  which  Christianity  came, 
has  shown  itself,  as  we  should  indeed  expect, 
without  the  power  to  arouse  and  inspire 
and  maintain  moral  effort  and  moral  enthu¬ 
siasm  in  the  mass  of  men.  It  leaves  men 
content  to  feel  themselves  as  part  of  the 
whole.  The  moral  lift  and  enthusiasm  and 
hope  which  Christianity  brought  into  the 
Greek  and  Roman  world  came  with  the 
Hebrew  belief  in  the  righteous  God,  who, 
however  much  He  loves  men  and  however 
closely  He  calls  them  into  union  with  Him¬ 
self,  is  yet  in  His  own  being  independent 
and  supreme  and  unalterable  ;  our  creator 
and  our  judge  ;  our  saviour  also — but  a 
saviour  whose  fellowship  we  can  only 
attain  by  purifying  ourselves  even  as  He 
is  pure.  I  can  conceive  nothing  more 
certain  than  that  with  us  to-day  the 
morality  of  the  future  depends  on  our  hold¬ 
ing  fast  the  Christian  belief  in  God,  and 


54  THE  immanence  of  god 

refusing  to  relapse  upon  the  philosophic 
pantheism. 

Secondly,  the  superiority  of  the  Christian 
belief  in  God  lies  in  the  method  by  which 
it  was  received.  There  is  a  memorable 
passage  in  the  Phaedo  of  Plato,  in  which 
Socrates  is  represented  as  expressing  his  dis¬ 
satisfaction  with  the  arguments  by  which 
he  and  his  friends  had  been  endeavouring 
to  prove  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  ‘And 
yet  /  he  says,  ‘  I  should  deem  him  a  coward 
who  did  not  prove  what  is  said  to  the  utter¬ 
most.  For  he  should  persevere  until  he 
has  attained  one  of  two  things  :  either  he 
should  discern  or  learn  the  truth  ;  or  if 
this  is  impossible,  I  would  have  him  take 
the  best  and  most  irrefragable  of  human 
words  (arguments),  and  let  this  be  the  raft 
upon  which  he  sails  through  life — not  with¬ 
out  risk,  as  I  admit,  if  he  cannot  find  some 
word  of  God  which  will  more  safely  and 
surely  carry  him.' 

It  is  such  a  word  of  God,  giving  a 
different  kind  of  security  to  our  religious 
beliefs  from  that  which  speculation 
could  ever  attain — a  security  such  as 
attaches  itself  to  our  feelings  of  right 
and  wrong — it  is  such  a  word  of  God 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD  55 

which  we  believe  to  have  been  really 
uttered. 

The  Hebrew  prophets  knew  themselves 
to  be  its  subjects  and  its  organs.  Through 
many  generations  of  inspired  men,  there 
was  impressed  upon  a  whole  nation  a  pro¬ 
found  belief  that  God  had  really  disclosed 
Himself  and  His  character  to  them.  This 
faith  received  its  fulfilment,  and  was 
made  universal,  through  J esus  Christ .  Thus 
there  has  been  communicated  to  men 
a  certain  conception  of  God  not  due  to 
fallible  speculation,  but  to  God’s  own  will 
to  reveal  Himself.  This  message  may, 
nay  must,  become  the  subject  for  philo¬ 
sophical  speculation,  and  the  intellect  of 
men  must  use  the  conception  of  God  thus 
received  to  interpret  the  world  and  har¬ 
monize  the  whole  of  experience.  But  the 
revelation  itself  is  given  in  forms  of  human 
speech,  and,  at  least  as  truly,  in  forms  of 
human  life,  such  as  are  intelligible  to  the 
hearts  of  ordinary  men.  Thus  it  becomes, 
not  the  doctrine  of  a  school  of  thinkers, 
but  the  creed  of  a  catholic  church,  the 
faith  in  the  one  God,  the  Father,  the  Son, 
and  the  Holy  Ghost.  And  if  in  any  sense 
there  be  a  God  whom  we  can  rightly  call 


56  THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

our  Father,  and  whose  sons  we  are,  then,  I 
say,  this  method  of  self-disclosure  or  reve¬ 
lation  corresponds  to  the  idea  of  His 
Fatherhood,  and  is  of  a  piece  with  the 
whole  experience  of  mankind  as  to  the 
method  by  which  moral  and  spiritual  truth, 
as  opposed  to  the  truth  about  nature,  has 
made  itself  known  among  men. 

Lastly,  the  Christian  idea  of  God  justifies 
itself  to  the  intellect  by  its  comprehensive¬ 
ness  ;  by  enabling  us  to  make  our  own  all 
the  truth  of  the  divine  immanence  without 
the  moral  disadvantages  which  belong  to 
the  conception  of  God  as  the  soul  of  nature, 
when  we  have  that  and  nothing  more. 

The  Christian  conception  of  God  in  fact 
holds  a  middle  point  between  Deism,  against 
which  the  New  Theology  is  in  somewhat 
violent  reaction,  and  Pantheism,  into  which 
in  its  reaction  it  undoubtedly  plunges. 
The  New  Theology  is  in  reaction  against 
what  it  describes  as  ‘  the  old  idea  of  God  * — 
as  if  He  were  some  great  emperor  who 
sits  somewhere  outside  and  above  the 
world,  who  made  it  and  set  it  going  and 
occasionally  intervenes  to  set  it  right  again. 
This,  which  has  been  well  called  ‘  the 
carpenter  idea  ’  of  God,  is  in  fact  not  the 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD  57 

old  idea,  if  by  that  is  meant  the  orthodox 
or  scriptural  idea.  It  is  a  gross  distortion 
of  it.  Deism,  which  is  the  best  form  in 
which  this  one-sided  conception  of  God  took 
shape,  was  a  theory  of  a  certain  school  of 
thinkers  in  the  eighteenth  century,  but  cer¬ 
tainly  not  the  conception  of  Christian  theo¬ 
logy.  For  the  Christian,  God  is  in  the  world 
in  all  its  parts  and  at  every  moment,  reveal¬ 
ing  Himself  in  varying  degrees  in  all  its 
force,  and  order,  and  beauty,  and  truth, 
and  goodness.  But  the  universe  does  not 
exhaust  Him  or  limit  Him.  Beyond  the 
universe  and  independent  of  it,  He  is  in 
Himself,  limited  by  nothing  outside  Him¬ 
self,1  in  the  eternal  fellowship  of  His  own 
being.  He  is  in  all,  but  also  over  all,  supreme 
and  free.  Thus  it  is  not  true  that  ‘  all  is 
God  :  ’  for  this  is  to  identify  His  being 
with  that  of  His  creatures,  which  our  own 
self-consciousness,  to  go  no  further,  pro¬ 
hibits.  It  is  not  true  that  ‘  God  is  all  : 9 
for  that  is  to  suggest  that  he  has  no  being 
independent  of  and  beyond  the  world.  But 

1  It  is  often  said,  and  may  be  truly  said,  that  God  is 
infinite,  or  ‘  unlimited.’  But  it  is  more  exact  to  say  that 
God  is  self-limited :  limited  by  nothing  except  the 
eternal  law  and  character  of  His  own  being. 


58  THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD 

it  is  true  that  '  from  him  ’  and  '  in  him  *  and 
‘  unto  him  ’  are  all  things ;  that  He  is 
the  creator  of  all  things,  who  has  made  man 
especially  in  His  own  image ;  and  the 
sustaining  life  of  all  things;  who  invites  man 
into  most  intimate  communion  and  corre¬ 
spondence  with  Himself;  and  the  end 
towards  whom  all  things  tend,  the  moral 
judge  of  all  free  and  conscious  beings. 

I  do  not  suppose  that  the  teachers  of  the 
New7  Theology  w7ho  proclaim  a  '  human 
God  ’  are  in  a  position  to  object  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  creed  as  'anthropomorphism/ 
that  is,  as  imagining  a  God  in  the  likeness 
of  man.  The  fact  is  that  whatever  man 
thinks  or  imagines  he  must  think  or  imagine 
'  anthropomorphically/  for  he  can  think 
only  human  thoughts.  It  follows  that  if 
human  thoughts  are  necessarily  limited  and 
imperfect,  the  highest  thought  that  man  can 
think  of  God  is  inadequate  to  its  subject. 
The  Christian  Fathers,  in  deepest  reverence, 
were  never  weary  of  reiterating  that  we 
but  know  God  as  in  an  inadequate  reflection, 
seeing  ‘  as  in  a  mirror,  darkly.’  But  the 
point  is  that  human  nature  is  at  least  a 
truer  image  of  God  than  mechanical  forces 
or  merely  animal  life.  For  man  pre-emi- 


THE  IMMANENCE  OF  GOD  59 

nently  is  made  ‘  in  God's  image.'  If  God 
is  not  in  man's  image  (anthropomorphic), 
man,  with  his  spiritual  and  free  personality, 
is  in  God's  image  (theomorphic).  Thus  in 
Jesus  Christ  the  best  that  we  can  know  or 
believe  about  God  is  revealed  in  a  human 
character ;  and  the  human  relationship 
of  father  and  son  is  the  best  image  of  the 
eternal  fellowship  which  is  God’s  own  being. 


LECTURE  IV 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN  1 

The  view  of  sin  which  the  New  Theology 
presents  follows  from  its  idea  of  God. 
God  is  the  mysterious  power  which  is  finding 
expression  in  the  universe  and  in  mankind 
as  part  of  the  whole.  And  the  process  in 
which  God  thus  realizes  Himself  in  the 
universe  is  a  process  of  gradual  evolu¬ 
tion  or  upward  development.  In  this  pro¬ 
cess  sin  has  appeared.  Its  existence — in 
forms  of  lust  and  greed  and  hatred  and 
cruelty  and  falsehood — cannot  be  denied, 
nor  its  ugliness  and  hatefulness.  But  is  it, 
we  ask,  voluntary  and  therefore  culpable  ? 
There  is  no  doubt  that  Sir  Oliver  Lodge 
would  say  that  it  is,  though  he  does  not  seem 
to  me  to  follow  out  this  admission  to  its 
consequences.  And,  with  much  less  clear¬ 
ness  and  emphasis,  Mr.  Campbell  appears 

1  This  subject  is  treated,  from  a  more  hortatory  point 
of  view,  in  Sermon  iii,  p.  231. 

60 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN  6l 

to  recognize  that  sin  is  in  some  measure 
voluntary  and  culpable.  We  have,  he 
admits,  to  ‘  mourn  over  our  own  slowness 
in  getting  into  line  with  the  cosmic  purpose.’ 
Sin  is  being  ‘  false  to  ourselves  and  our 
divine  origin.’  1  But  though  we  have  thus 
a  certain  power  to  retard  the  process  of 
advance  in  ourselves  and  the  world,  we 
cannot  do  more  than  retard  it.  It  goes 
forward  inevitably.  Sin  is  only  a  phase 
which  is  being  outgrown  and  left  behind. 
It  is  ‘  a  mistake/  2  akin  to  the  mistakes  we 
make  in  every  department  of  human  pro¬ 
gress.  It  is  an  ignorant  quest  for  true  life 
and  for  God.3  Through  all  our  mistakes, 
the  upward  process  goes  on.  4  Slowly,  very 
slowly,  the  race  is  climbing  the  steep  ascent.’ 
And  in  every  individual  man  the  true  life 
must  finally  be  realized.’ 4 

And  what  is  sin  ?  Its  essence  is  selfish¬ 
ness,  we  are  told.  It  is  seeking  our  own 
personal  and  separate  interest  or  pleasure 
instead  of  the  whole.  And  the  explanation 
of  this  mistaken  tendency  lies  in  the  animal 
nature  out  of  which  we  have  been  developed. 
It  is  ‘  the  tiger  and  the  ape  ’  in  us.  Selfish- 

1  The  New  Theology,  pp.  66,  109.  2  ibid.,  p.  214. 

3  ibid.,  pp.  52,  153  f 160  ff.  4  ibid.,  pp.  215-16. 


62 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


ness,  injustice,  and  cruelty  are  ‘  relics  of 
our  brute  ancestor *  which  civilization  is 
slowly  refining  away.1 

Such  a  theory  finds  itself  in  conflict  with 
the  common  Christian  idea  of  an  original 
fall  of  man.  Thus  the  only  real  fall 
which  Mr.  Campbell  can  recognize  appears 
on  examination  to  be  a  fall,  not  of  man,  but 
of  God.  ‘  The  coming  of  a  finite  creature 
into  being  is  itself  of  the  nature  of  a  fall — a 
coming  down  from  perfection  to  imperfec¬ 
tion.'  2  The  idea  is  that  ‘  the  universal 
life  ’ — that  is  God — in  order  to  realize 
itself  in  the  universe,  must  submit  to  limita¬ 
tion  in  finite  forms  of  life.  This  is,  of  course, 
only  ‘  a  fall  ’  in  the  sense  that  the  deep 
humiliation  of  the  incarnation,  as  St.  Paul 
conceives  it,  might  be  called  a  fall.  It  has 
nothing  to  do  with  the  Christian  idea  of  a 
fall  of  man  by  wilful  disobedience.  In  man, 
then,  there  was  no  original  fall :  unless  we 
can  give  this  name  to  the  passage  from  a 
brute  life,  unconscious  of  moral  distinctions, 
to  the  spiritual  consciousness  of  right  and 
wrong.  In  becoming  conscious  of  moral 
possibility  and  moral  freedom  man  became 
conscious  of  a  lower  self  of  animal  impulse 

1  The  New  Theology,  pp.  61-2.  2  ibid.,  p.  66. 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


63 


which  had  to  be  overcome  ;  and  in  this  con¬ 
sciousness  of  contrast  between  his  gross 
actual  nature  and  actual  habits,  and  the 
idea  of  what  he  ought  to  be  and  may  become, 
originates,  it  is  supposed,  the  idea  of  ‘  the 
fall/  That  is  to  say,  the  soul,  conscious  of 
a  divine  parentage  and  destiny,  finds  the 
unspiritual  bodily  nature  a  prison-house 
and  a  degradation.  But  this  fall  was  no 
fault  of  man.  ‘  The  perception  of  evil  is  the 
concomitant  of  your  expanding  finite  con¬ 
sciousness  of  good/  1  It  is  indeed  plainly 
no  real  fall,  but  a  step  upwards.  ‘  It  has 
no  sinister  antecedents.  Its  purpose  is 
good/  2  It  '  is  but  a  statement  of  imper¬ 
fection,’  and  thus  ‘  is  not  man’s  fault  but 
God’s  will,  and  is  a  means  towards  a  great 
end.’  From  this  way  of  conceiving  ‘  the 
fall  ’  and  from  all  the  accompanying  view 
of  sin,  it  will  follow  naturally  that  Mr. 
Campbell  cannot  tolerate  the  idea  of  God’s 
wrath  upon  sin,  or  of  God  punishing  sin, 
or  indeed  of  God  as  the  judge  of  men, 
judging,  as  it  were,  from  outside. 

God  is  to  be  sought  in  myself.  He  is 
realizing  Himself  through  me.  If  mistakes 
are  made  in  this  process  of  realizing  God. 

1  ibid.,  p.  45.  2  ibid.,  p.  66. 


64  THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 

there  is  no  other  punishment  than  such  as 
a  man  thereby  inevitably  makes  for  him¬ 
self,  such  as  is  involved  in  the  process  of 
recovery,  and  there  is  no  other  wrath  or 
judgement  than  of  his  own  self-condemna¬ 
tion,  the  judgement  of  his  own  higher  self 
which  is  indeed  divine,  and  which  must 
finally  win  the  victory  and  realize  itself  in 
every  single  life.1 

Now  it  may  be  questioned  whether  this 
view  of  sin  is  clearly  thought  out ;  whether, 
in  particular,  the  question  of  voluntari¬ 
ness  is  really  faced  in  the  light  of  its 
consequences.  But  in  its  general  lines  it 
presents  an  intelligible  attitude  towards  sin, 
and  one  which  we  recognize  as  thoroughly 
modern  :  it  permeates,  one  may  say,  most 
of  the  popular  novel  literature  of  the  day. 
At  the  same  time  we  shall  probably  feel 
that,  as  leading  us  to  think  of  sin  as  a 
weakness  or  an  error,  pitiable  before  it  is, 
and  much  more  than  it  is,  blameworthy, 
and  as  leaving  very  little  place  for  indigna¬ 
tion  against  sin,  and  none  for  the,  con¬ 
ception  of  sin  as  leading  in  the  individual 
to  ultimate  and  irretrievable  disorder,  it  falls 
very  far  short  of  the  teaching  of  the  Bible. 

1  The  New  Theology,  pp.  213  fi. 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN  65 

The  Old  Testament  is  quite  full  of  the 
idea  of  sin  as  rebellion.  God,  who  made 
man,  made  him,  unlike  His  other  creatures 
in  this  world,  capable  of  voluntary  and 
glad  obedience  ;  and  mankind  has  proved 
rebellious  ;  and  this  rebellion  merits  the 
righteous  wrath  of  God,  and  brings  down 
His  judgement  on  nations  and  individuals  ; 
and  the  true  attitude  of  man,  when  he  has 
‘  come  to  himself,’  is  one  of  profound 
penitence  and  earnest  amendment  and 
willing  acceptance  of  the  divine  punish¬ 
ment,  now  truly  remedial.  This,  beyond  all 
question,  is  the  prevailing  way  of  regarding 
the  actual  state  of  man  in  the  Old  Testament, 
And  the  essence  of  this  view  of  sin  is  that 
it  lies,  not  in  the  bodily  nature,  but  in 
the  will.  It  is  rebellion,  the  rebellion 
of  the  will  of  man  against  the  righteous 
God. 

Certain  limitations  which  are  to  be  found 
in  the  Old  Testament  doctrine  disappear 
in  the  New.  In  particular  the  area  in  which 
God  is  thought  of  as  dealing  with  man  is 
definitely  and  finally  extended  beyond  this 
present  life,  and  the  much  fuller  concep¬ 
tion  of  the  redemptive  love  of  God  gives  a 
different  colour  to  the  thought  of  God’s 

5 


66 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


attitude  towards  sin.  But  in  this,  as  in 
other  respects,  it  is  upon  the  Old  Testament 
doctrine  that  the  New  Testament  is  built  ; 
and  the  idea  of  sin  is  the  same.  Our  Lord 
is  indeed  mainly  occupied  in  directing  the 
minds  of  His  disciples  and  hearers  to  positive 
ideals.  He  is  announcing  the  moral  char¬ 
acter  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  But  His 
first  call  to  men  reiterated  John  the  Bap¬ 
tist’s  claim  for  repentance.  '  Repent  ye  ’ 
— that  is  the  beginning.1  And  consistently 
He  deals  with  men  as  needing  a  fundamental 
change  and  fundamental  renewal :  ‘  Except 
ye  turn,  and  become  as  little  children,  ye 
shall  in  no  wise  enter  into  the  kingdom  of 
heaven/  ‘  Except  a  man  be  born  anew, 
he  cannot  see  the  kingdom  of  God.’  2 
Speaking  to  His  disciples,  and  speaking 
about  man’s  natural  goodness,  He  sees  in 
it  the  taint  of  sin  :  ‘  If  ye  then,  being 

evil,  know  how  to  give  good  gifts  unto 
your  children,  how  much  more  shall  your 
heavenly  Father .  .  .  .’3  Quite  uncompro¬ 
misingly  he  warns  men  of  the  possibility 
of  eternal  or  irremediable  punishment  for 

1  Matt.  iv.  17  ;  Mark  i.  15. 

2  Matt,  xviii.  3,  John  iii.  3. 

2  Matt.  vii.  11,  Luke  xi.  13,  cf.  xiii.  1-8. 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


6  7 


sin,  coming  from  the  divine  righteousness,1 
and  speaks  of  a  certain  act  or  state  of  wilful 
sin  itself  as  ‘  having  never  forgiveness/ 
and  as  eternal.2  Certainly  it  is  the  case  that 
Jesus  Christ  gives  no  countenance  at  all 
to  views  of  sin  which  lead  us  to  think  of 
it  as  a  temporary  error  on  the  right  way, 
But  probably  the  most  noticeable  point 
about  our  Lord’s  attitude  towards  sin  is 
that  His  indignation,  which  is  as  fiery  as 
the  indignation  of  the  old  prophets,  is 
mainly  directed,  not  against  sensual,  but 
against  spiritual  sin.  It  is  against  sin  of 
the  kind  which  we  should  describe  as  least 
bodily,  and  having  least  to  do  with  our 
animal  ancestors,  that  He  concentrates 
His  wrath.  It  is  against  pride,  and  calcu¬ 
lated  worldliness,  and  spiritual  despotism, 
and  ambition,  and  love  of  power,  against  the 
sins  of  respectable  spiritual  men,  rather 
than  against  the  sins  of  ungoverned  passion 
and  animal  lust.  With  the  utmost  em¬ 
phasis,  therefore,  we  should  say  that  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  leaves  us  with 
a  profoundly  deepened  assurance  that  the 
seat  of  sin  lies  in  the  will  of  man ;  and  that 

1  Matt.  x.  28,  xxv.  46,  Mark  ix.  43,  48. 

2  Mark  iii.  29,  Matt.  xii.  32,  Luke  xii.  10. 


68 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


we  are,  in  any  true  view  of  human  nature, 
face  to  face  with  this  awful  possibility  and 
reality  of  the  human  will  setting  itself  in 
obstinate  rebellion  against  the  will  of  God. 

Nor  is  it  open  to  doubt  that  to  our  Lord’s 
spiritual  perception  (as  to  that  of  St.  Paul 
and  St.  John),  the  spectacle  of  human  sin 
was  thrown  upon  the  larger  background  of 
an  unseen  world  of  spirits.  Human  rebel¬ 
lion  was  a  portion  of  a  larger  and  wider 
rebellion  of  ‘  principalities  and  powers/ 
the  devil  and  his  angels.  As  God  is,  and 
remains,  the  only  Lord,  so  the  victory  over 
evil  is  sure.  But  meanwhile  man’s  moral 
trial  is  made  all  the  more  serious  by  the 
opposition  of  unseen  enemies,  and  his 
rebellion  all  the  more  serious  by  his  unseen 
allies. 

St.  John  formulates  his  theory  of  sin  in 
the  words,  ‘  Sin  is  lawlessness.’  1  He  means 
by  lawlessness,  not,  as  we  might  mean, 
merely  something  anomalous  :  but  simply 
rebellion  against  the  law  of  God.  He  means 
that  the  two  phrases  are  coincident :  that 
sin  begins  and  ends  with  violation  of  God’s 

1  I  J ohn  iii.  4  :  ?;  dfJLapria  eaTiv  rj  dvop(a.  The 

use  of  the  articles  makes  the  two  terms  absolutely  co¬ 
extensive. 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


69 


law,  and  that  except  in  the  rebellion  of 
created  spirits  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
violation  of  God’s  law.  And  in  thus  making 
the  will  the  seat  of  sin,  and  identifying 
sin  with  rebellion,  St.  John  is  but  formu¬ 
lating  the  general  view  of  the  Bible.  It  is 
also  St.  Paul’s  doctrine  :  ‘  The  wrath  of  God 
is  revealed  from  heaven  against  all  ungod¬ 
liness  and  unrighteousness  of  men,  who  hold 
down  the  truth  in  unrighteousness  ’  ;  f  upon 
them  that  are  factious,  and  obey  not  the 
truth,  but  obey  unrighteousness,  shall  be 
wrath  and  indignation,  tribulation  and  an¬ 
guish,  upon  every  soul  of  man  that  worketh 
evil,  of  the  J ew  first  and  also  of  the  Greek  ’  ; 
‘  who  shall  suffer  punishment,  even  eternal 
destruction  from  the  face  of  the  Lord  and 
from  the  glory  of  his  might.’  1  It  is  needless 
to  go  on  multiplying  quotations. 

It  has,  however,  been  said  that,  for  St. 
Paul,  the  seat  of  sin  is  in  the  bodily  nature, 
‘  the  flesh,’  and  that  he  regards  it  as  almost 
involuntary :  ‘  I  know  that  in  me,  that  is, 
in  my  flesh,  dwelleth  no  good  thing  :  for 
to  will  is  present  with  me,  but  to  do  that 
which  is  good  is  not.’  Thus  ‘  it  is  no  more 
I  that  do  the  evil,  but  sin  which  dwelleth 

1  Rom.  1.  18,  ii.  8,  9;  2  Thess.  i.  9. 


70 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


in  me.’  '  Not  what  I  would  that  do  I 
practise  ;  but  what  I  hate,  that  I  do.’  ‘  0 
wretched  man  that  I  am,  who  shall  deliver 
me  out  of  the  body  of  this  death  ?  ’ 1  But 
closer  examination  proves  this  not  to  be 
the  case.  St.  Paul  perceives  that  the 
misdirection  of  the  human  will  has  per¬ 
verted  the  body,  so  that  the  body  of  man 
has  become  accustomed  to  evil,  impregnated 
with  evil.  And  even  when  the  will  has 
become  wholly  right  with  God — for  that  is 
the  case  wliich  he  is  here  contemplating — 
there  still  remains  an  intractable  nature 
which  the  man’s  will  cannot  draw  with 
it  or  control,  and  which  forces  the  man  to 
feel  his  need  of  divine  grace  to  transform 
him  and  purge  him  through  and  through. 

This  intractable  nature  is  sin  in  the  body 
and  bodily  impulses  ;  but  this  is,  in  St. 
Paul,  the  secondary  and  not  the  primary 
meaning  of  sin.  It  comes  into  notice  when 
sin,  in  its  primary  meaning  of  rebellion  of 
the  will,  is  over  and  gone.  It  is,  in  the 
individual  or  in  the  race,  a  consequence  of 
this  rebellion.  And  it  remains  true  that  the 
real  seat  and  origin  of  sin,  according  to 
St.  Paul,  is  the  will ;  and  there  is  no  bodily 

1  Rom.  vii.  15-24. 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN  71 

sin,  however  gross,  which  is  ultimately 
anything  else  than  the  misuse  of  a  physical 
nature  essentially  good  by  a  perverted  will. 

And  St.  Paul’s  whole  teaching  emphasizes 
the  principle  of  justification  by  faith;  and 
this  principle  does  indeed  mean,  at  bottom, 
nothing  else  than  this  :  that  when  the  will  is 
again  set  right  and  enlightened,  and  wholly 
redirected  towards  God  and  open  to  God’s 
offer  of  love,  then  the  whole  nature  will 
be  redressed  and  brought  right.  Redemp¬ 
tion  begun  in  the  will,  by  faith  in  God  and 
Jesus  Christ,  draws  with  it  the  whole  nature, 
body,  soul,  and  spirit,  each  to  its  really 
natural  order  and  harmony.1 

Christianity,  indeed,  if  it  be  true  to  facts, 
must  recognize  all  that  St.  Paul  says  about 
f  sin  in  the  members  ’;  but  the  ultimate  seat 
of  sin  is  not  the  body,  but  the  will,  and 
sin  is  only  really  sinful  so  far  as  it  is  the 
rebellion  of  the  personal  will  against  God. 

This  is  the  fundamental  Christian  doc¬ 
trine.  It  is  not  stated  in  the  creeds, 
though  it  is  implied  in  the  phrases  ‘  I  believe 
in  the  forgiveness  of  sins,’  or  ‘  in  one  baptism 

1  I  have  dealt  with  this  matter  at  greater  length  in  my 
Practical  Exposition  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans  (Murray), 
i.  66  ff.,  245  ff.,  279. 


72 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


for  the  remission  of  sins/  and  ‘  who  for  our 
salvation  became  man/  for  these  phrases 
imply  that  every  man  lies  in  sin  and  needs 
forgiveness  and  renewal.  But  it  is  found 
throughout  Scripture,  and,  speaking  gener¬ 
ally,  throughout  Christian  theology.  Ter- 
tullian,  who  may  be  said  to  have  been 
the  first  Christian  psychologist,  is  right 
in  fastening  upon  this  as  the  distinctive 
Christian  principle  of  sin.1  And  if  it  be 
true,  it  is  obvious  that  sin  is  not  anything 
which  civilization  has  a  tendency  to  out¬ 
grow.  The  exhibitions  of  sin  are  different 
in  different  stages  of  civilization — different 
among  barbarians  and  in  highly  advanced 
races.  But  it  is  as  much  present  in  the 
latter  as  the  former.  And  throughout  the 
whole  history  of  humanity  it  is  in  the  same 
sense  destructive  in  its  tendency.  Huxley 
speaks  of  ‘  that  fixed  order  of  nature  which 
sends  social  disorganization  upon  the  track 
of  immorality,  as  surely  as  it  sends  physical 
disease  after  physical  trespasses/  and  he 
speaks  of  its  being  ‘  the  high  mission  '  of 
science  ‘  to  be  the  preacher  of  a  firm  and 
living  faith  ’  in  that  f  fixed  moral  order.'  2 

1  De  paen.  3. 

2  Evolution  and  Ethics  (Macmillan),  p.  146. 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


73 


Substitute  for  the  words  ‘  fixed  order  ’ 
some  such  phrase  as  ‘  the  will  of  God,  the 
moral  ruler  of  the  world/  and  you  have 
here  the  doctrine  of  the  prophets  about f  the 
day  of  the  Lord’ — the  judgement  of  God 
upon  nations  and  individuals.  History, 
so  far  as  it  is  able  to  pass  a  verdict  upon  the 
causes  of  national  disintegration,  confirms 
the  prophets’  teaching.  As  you  look  out 
upon  the  extraordinarily  chequered  course 
of  human  progress,  you  cannot  resist  the 
impression  that  progress  might  have  been 
infinitely  more  continuous  and  more  gene¬ 
ral  but  for  the  persistent  tendency  in 
men  to  follow  their  lusts  and  appetites 
and  selfish  ambitions  instead  of  conforming 
themselves  to  the  will  of  God,  as  they  were 
able  to  know  it.  The  history  of  the  race 
is  in  fact  only  the  history  of  the  individual 
‘  writ  large,’  and  we  know  well  enough  what 
sin  is  in  ourselves  and  others ;  how  indis¬ 
putable  is  the  fact  of  wilfulness,  and  the 
refusal  of  the  divine  law  which  claims 
authority  over  us  in  our  conscience,  and 
the  degradation  and  misery  which  this 
wilfulness  works  in  us. 

So  far  as  we  can  trace  the  history  of 
man,  from  end  to  end  of  our  knowledge, 


74 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


sin  is  always  there,  in  the  form  of  man’s 
refusal  to  submit  himself  to  his  best  lights  ; 
and  it  is  there  on  the  largest  scale,  and 
always  with  the  same  ruinous  results,  in 
the  individual  and  in  the  race. 

It  is  of  course  obvious,  from  any  point  of 
view,  that  the  individual  man  is,  from  his 
birth  and  before  it,  deeply  influenced  by 
the  race.  It  is  obvious  that  the  individual 
does  not  ‘  start  fair  ’ — that  he  is  largely 
what  the  circumstances  of  his  birth  and 
nurture  make  him.  Thus  it  is  certainly 
true  in  some  sense  that  sin  is  in  the  race 
before  it  is  in  the  individual  will,  and  that 
every  individual  is  born  into  an  inheritance 
of  sin.  Whether  this  inheritance  of  sin  is 
actually  transmitted  physically  or  whether 
it  is,  in  the  deepest  sense,  the  result  of  en¬ 
vironment  and  the  social  influences  which 
are  upon  us  from  our  infancy,  we  need  not 
now  consider.  The  relation  of  the  indivi¬ 
dual  man  to  humanity,  and  the  manner 
in  which  the  effects  of  the  individual’s 
action  are  transmitted  in  the  race,  is  a  very 
obscure  question.  I  am  not  now  concerned 
with  it.  In  any  case,  whether  by  physical 
transmission  or  by  social  influence,  each 
individual  is  born  into  a  world  of  sin,  and 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


/  5 

finds  his  own  nature  more  or  less  weakened 
and  tainted  before  his  own  personal  re¬ 
sponsibility  begins.  But  it  will  be  admitted 
by  all  Christians,  except  a  school  of  extreme 
Calvinists  which  can  hardly  any  longer  be 
said  to  exist,  that  this  ‘  taint  of  nature  ’ 
does  not  reach  to  the  point  of  annihilating 
our  moral  freedom  and  responsibility ;  and 
that  wirer e  the  will  is  set  right  the  viiole 
nature  will  ultimately  follow. 

All  that  I  am  now  concerned  to  maintain 
as  the  indisputably  Christian  principle,  the 
constant  teaching  of  the  Bible,  is  that  the 
viiole  strength  and  essence  of  sin  lies  in 
the  lawiessness  of  the  will,  and  that  it  is 
this,  and  nothing  else  than  this,  which  has 
weakened  and  depraved  our  humanity, 
and  been  the  main  retarding  and  dis¬ 
integrating  force  in  human  development. 

Sin,  then,  as  we  know  it  by  experience 
in  the  individual,  is  ahvays  a  fall,  a  loss  and 
not  a  gain.  It  is  ‘  lawiessness/  and  to 
break  the  lawT  of  our  being  is  never  a  gain. 
The  returned  prodigal,  for  all  the  joy  of  his 
recovery,  can  never  do  otherwise  than 
lament  that  he  left  his  father’s  house.  The 
act  of  rebellion  is  always  a  step  along  the 
road  wiiich  leads  to  the  state  of  wilich  our 


76  THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 

Lord  said,  *  Good  were  it  for  that  man  if 
he  had  not  been  born’ — a  step,  though 
mercifully  not  an  irrecoverable  step,  along 
the  way  to  ruin.  And  when  you  look  at 
humanity  in  the  large  (so  far  as  his  origin 
can  be  known  or  conjectured)  from  his 
first  beginnings  of  properly  human  con¬ 
sciousness,  sin  has  been  always  a  fall,  and 
at  every  stage  has  made,  as  the  individual,  so 
also  the  society  to  which  he  belongs,  weaker 
and  poorer  and  less  progressive  than  might 
have  been  the  case. 

And  this  doctrine  of  sin  is  in  no  way 
dependent  upon  our  regarding  the  story 
of  Genesis  iii.  as  an  historical  record.  In 
the  early  Christian  centuries  it  was  com¬ 
monly  regarded  as  giving  us,  not  a  literal 
history,  but,  to  use  the  illuminating 
phrase  of  St.  Gregory  of  Nyssa,  ‘  ideas 
(or  ‘  doctrines  ’)  in  the  form  of  a  narra¬ 
tive.’  1  The  materials  of  the  narrative 
come  from  sources  shared  by  the  J  ews  with 
the  Babylonians  and  other  races.  But 
amongst  the  Jews  the  story  becomes  the 
vehicle  for  a  teaching  about  the  meaning  of 

1  Oratio  Catechetica,  5:  iv  birjyrjcrecDS  ei'Sei  hoy para  f] fj.lv 
npoTiOepevos.  The  phrase  refers  to  the  whole  opening 
narrative  of  the  creation  and  the  fall. 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


77 


sin  which,  conveyed  in  a  form  intelligible  to 
children  or  childish  races,  is,  in  its  moral 
contents,  for  ever  true  and  valuable.  It 
is,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  quite  untrue  to  say 
that  the  Old  Testament  doctrine  of  sin, 
which  the  New  Testament  inherits,  is  built 
upon  this  narrative.  It  has  no  appreciable 
effect  upon  the  rest  of  the  Old  Testament. 
In  fact  the  doctrine  of  sin  was  wrought  out 
in  the  moral  experience  of  the  Hebrews, 
under  the  guidance  of  the  prophetic  spirit, 
and  the  colouring  given  to  the  old  story 
was  the  result  of  their  moral  insight  into  the 
meaning  of  sin,  and  not  the  source  of  it.1 

The  great  advantage  of  the  Christian 
view  of  sin  lies  in  its  moral  effects.  Let 
all  men  know  the  love  of  God  for  them 
individually,  and  the  freedom  of  which 
their  nature  is  capable ;  let  them  know 
that  only  one  thing  keeps  them  back  from 
entering  upon  their  glorious  heritage,  and 
that  is  the  false  desire  of  independence, 
the  shrinking  from  God,  the  refusal  of  the 
will  to  surrender  itself  to  Him,  and  you 

1  With  St.  Paul’s  doctrine  of  the  fall,  and  of  the  unity 
of  humanity  in  Adam  and  Christ,  and  of  the  relation  of 
sin  and  death,  I  have  dealt  in  the  work  referred  to, 
Romans  i.,  190  ff.,  and  app.  note  E. 


78  THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 

inspire  men  with  a  great  hope.  You  have 
an  effective  gospel.  The  most  degraded 
of  men  can  be  assured  that,  if  he  will  only 
surrender  himself  in  faith  to  God,  and 
accept  the  divine  promise  as  it  is  assured 
to  him  in  Christ,  and  open  his  heart  to  the 
divine  influence,  he  can  break  once  for  all 
with  the  past ;  his  nature  will  be,  there  and 
then,  brought  back  upon  the  track  of 
recovery  ;  he  will  regain  self-m aster}/.  All 
the  effects  of  sin,  in  the  habits  of  his  own 
body  or  the  traditions  of  his  family  or  class 
or  nation  or  race,  will  be  at  last  overcome 
by  the  power  of  the  redemptive  Spirit. 
This  may  happen — as  the  experience  of 
conversions  has  constantly  shown — with 
amazing  rapidity,  or  it  may  be  a  slow 
process  only  begun  in  this  life ;  but  the 
victory,  slow  or  rapid,  lies  in  the  will — in 
the  act  of  faith  by  which  the  whole  life  is 
brought  again  into  subjection  to  God  in 
Christ. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  more  you  allow 
men  to  believe  that  the  fault  lies  in  their 
bodies — in  an  animal  ancestry,  imperfectly 
refined,  the  more  certainly  you  encourage 
in  them  (what  is  the  root  delusion)  the 
tendency  to  regard  their  sins  as  their  mis- 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


79 


fortunes,  the  inevitable  result  of  their 
circumstances  and  their  natures.  This  is 
no  mere  theory.  It  is  rooted  upon  the 
experience  of  the  past.  The  tendency  to 
find  the  secret  of  sin  in  the  defilements  of 
matter  and  animal  life  has  prevailed  in  many 
ages  and  many  parts  of  the  world.  It  was 
the  dominant  idea  when  Christianity  came 
into  the  world.  It  has  at  times  resulted 
in  an  extreme  asceticism  which  has  had  for 
its  motive  the  desire  to  live  a  spiritual  life, 
separate  from  the  pollutions  of  the  body. 
But,  after  all,  we  cannot  live  separate  from 
the  body  ;  and  if  the  body  is  evil  we  cannot 
help  it.  Thus  the  tendency  to  find  the 
secret  of  sin  in  the  bodily  nature  has  in 
fact  resulted  in  general  in  a  moral  apathy — 
an  acquiescence  in  the  life  of  passion  and 
^  impulse.  A  great  part  of  the  redemptive 
power  which  Christianity  confessedly  exer¬ 
cised,  when  it  came  into  a  world  where  this 
false  idea  prevailed,-  lay  in  its  giving  men 
the  true  secret  of  sin. 

Again,  the  Christian  teaching  about  sin, 
as  it  appears  in  the  New  Testament  and 
in  the  Church  generally,  forces  a  man  to  feel 
that  there  is  no  limit  to  the  disaster  which, 
by  his  refusal  of  God  and  of  duty,  he  may 


8o 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


bring  upon  himself.  Without  allowing 
ourselves  to  close  any  possibly  open  ques¬ 
tion,  we  may  say  with  confidence  that 
the  teaching  of  Christ  holds  over  the  man 
who  persists  in  rebellious  self-will  the 
certainty  of  a  ruin  which  may  prove  at 
last  final  and  irretrievable.  I  do  not 
think  it  is  possible  to  doubt  that  Christ 
did  hold  this  ultimate  possibility  over  men — 
in  metaphorical  words  no  doubt,  but  in  its 
unrelieved  horror. 

If  we  let  man  think,  with  the  New  Theo¬ 
logy,  that  his  nature  is  in  an  inevitable 
progress  to  perfection,  which  his  selfishness 
may  indeed  retard,  and  in  which  his  sins 
may  involve  remedial  pains,  but  which 
none  the  less  is  certain  of  final  attainment, 
we  cannot  fail,  human  nature  being  what 
in  experience  we  know  it  to  be,  to  strengthen 
the  tendency  to  let  things  take  their  course, 
and  to  weaken  the  strength  of  the  naked 
appeal  to  the  human  will  as  the  arbiter  of 
the  man’s  destiny — his  heaven  or  his  hell. 

Once  more,  what  applies  to  the  individual 
applies  to  the  nation  or  the  race.  Chris¬ 
tianity  believes  in  a  divine  purpose  of 
progress,  and  finds  the  goal  of  human  pro¬ 
gress  assured  in  ‘  Christ  upon  the  throne.’ 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN  8l 

But  it  knows,  in  historical  fact,  that  nation 
after  nation  has  fallen  back  ;  that  there 
is  such  a  thing  as  the  decay  and  dissolution 
of  civilizations.  We  look  back  upon  ‘  the 
giant  forms  of  empires  on  their  way  to 
ruin.,  And  the  prophets  of  God  have  in 
every  age  carried  the  message  of  God 
to  their  nation,  that  progress  or  catastrophe 
depends  on  themselves,  and  depends  at 
bottom  upon  moral  character  ;  that,  though 
a  nation  may  subsist  with  much  wickedness 
in  it,  its  subsistence  depends  upon  the 
maintenance  of  the  core  of  righteousness 
within  it — upon  the  vigorous  force  of  a 
resisting  body  of  righteous  men  in  whom 
the  nation  will  consent  to  recognize  its 
true  self.  Once  more,  then,  the  more  you 
strengthen  the  belief  in  a  practically  in¬ 
evitable  or  necessary  progress — a  belief 
which  indeed  is  flatly  contradicted  by  experi¬ 
ence — the  more  you  weaken  the  prophetic 
appeal  to  the  social  conscience  of  men. 

It  will  be  said  that  in  all  this  I  am  ap¬ 
pealing  only  to  what  is  edifying,  not  to 
what  is  true.  I  am  not  afraid  of  this 
argument.  Christianity  is  a  revelation 
appealing  to  man’s  moral  will,  and  saying 
in  effect,  ‘  Try  it,  and  so  prove  its  truth/ 

6 


82 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN 


And  if  it  be  the  case  that  the  preaching  of 
the  Christian  doctrine  in  its  purity  does 
as  a  matter  of  fact  show  itself  in  the  fruits 
of  converted  living  and  moral  liberty  re¬ 
gained,  I  feel  sure  that  the  Christian 
doctrine  has  been  proved  practically  true. 
It  has  shown  that  it  possesses  the  secret  of 
life.  That  is  what  actually  happened  in 
the  first  preaching  of  Christianity  and  in 
every  subsequent  moral  revival  of  its 
power.  This  is  an  actual  experience  viewed 
from  outside  in  general  history,  and  viewed 
from  inside  in  the  record  which  great  and 
conspicuous  Christians — from  St.  Paul  and 
Justin  Martyr  and  Cyprian  and  Augustine 
downwards — have  given  of  their  moral  ex¬ 
perience  as  seen  from  within.  The  better 
the  men,  we  notice  in  passing,  the  sterner 
the  view  they  have  taken  of  the  sinfulness 
of  their  sins.  This  moral  experience  con¬ 
stitutes  the  subject-matter  for  a  philosophy 
of  sin,  and  for,  what  must  go  with  that, 
a  philosophy  of  the  relation  in  which  the 
soul  of  man  stands  to  God,  of  the  relation 
of  our  dependent  personalities  to  the 
Absolute.  We  get  here  into  a  very  obscure 
subject.  Certainly  it  has  not  been  satis¬ 
factorily  solved  hitherto.  Perhaps  it  never 


THE  IDEA  OF  SIN  83 

will  be  in  this  world.  But  Christianity 
has  made  a  vast  contribution  to  the  subject, 
and  the  core  of  the  Christian  contribution 
lies  in  the  truth,  proclaimed  by  God’s 
prophets,  reaffirmed  by  His  Son,  confirmed 
by  all  Christian  experience,  the  secret  of  all 
Christian  progress  in  the  individual  and  the 
race,  that  sin  lies  in  the  rebellion  of  the 
dependent  or  created  will  against  the 
will  of  the  Father  and  the  Creator.  Sin  is 
lawlessness. 


LECTURE  V 

THE  MEANING  OF  CHRIST’S  DIVINITY 

The  mode  of  thought  which  is  known 
as  the  New  Theology  is  connected  in  all  its 
parts.  It  concentrates  its  attention  upon 
God  as  the  universal  Spirit,  manifesting 
Himself  and  realizing  Himself  in  the  uni¬ 
verse.  Especially  in  the  development  of 
man’s  nature  upward  from  the  animal  to 
the  spiritual  does  it  look  for  this  revelation 
of  God.  And,  from  the  ethical  point  of 
view,  the  highest  point  of  achievement 
hitherto  attained  is  found  in  Christ.  In 
Him,  as  in  no  one  else,  we  can  really  see 
God  incarnate  :  we  can  see,  that  is,  that 
humanity  is  really  divine  and  God  is  really 
human.  And,  in  the  light  of  that  vision 
we  are  to  go  forward  to  realize  our  divinity 
or  divinize  our  manhood.  For  what  Christ 
is,  we  are  all  in  various  degrees  capable  of 
becoming.  We  are  all  potentially  sons  of 
God,  or  Christs.  However  much  hidden 

84 


Christ’s  divinity 


85 


or  overlaid,  the  divine  nature  is  in  all  of 
us,  and  is  capable,  especially  under  the 
influence  of  Christ,  of  being  evoked  into 
active  and  effective  life.  So,  as  man  ad¬ 
vances,  will  God  become  more  and  more 
incarnate  in  all  humanity,  or  in  other  words 
the  real  identity  of  Godhead  and  manhood 
will  become  more  and  more  evident.  Thus 
‘  the  Incarnation  doctrine  is  the  glorification 
of  human  effort.’1 

This  way  of  conceiving  the  incarnation 
doctrine  finds  a  guarded  expression  in  the 

1  Substance  of  Faith,  p.  88.  For  the  whole  paragraph 
see  pp.  85-90,  and  New  Theol.  pp.  68-1 1 1.  One  point  to 
be  noticed  is  that  Mr.  Campbell  conceives  of  the  spirit, 
or  higher  self  of  humanity,  as  prior  to  all  individual  men, 
as  having  a  real  existence,  and  constituting  ‘  a  perfect  and 
eternal  spiritual  being,  integral  to  the  being  of  God  ’ 
(p.  31).  This  he  elsewhere  calls  ‘the  Eternal  Christ,’ 
‘  the  archetypal  eternal  divine  man.’  It  (or  should  I 
say  he  ?)  is  ‘  an  emanation  of  the  Infinite,  the  Soul  of  the 
universe,’  or  at  any  rate  is  one  element  of  the  ‘  infinitely 
complex  being  of  God  ’  (p.  89).  This  Eternal  Christ  it 
is  which  is  manifested  in  the  historical  Jesus,  and  is  also 
the  higher  self  or  fundamental  being  of  every  one  of  us. 
This  doctrine  of  the  eternal  divine  man  would  not  require 
much  restatement  to  be  brought  into  harmony  with  the 
Church  doctrine  of  the  Eternal  Word  or  Son.  But, 
according  to  Mr.  Campbell,  we  all  are  at  bottom  this 
‘  Eternal  Christ  ’  in  the  same  sense  as  was  Jesus.  Thus 
the  ‘  Christ-man  ’  appears  again  and  again  in  history 
in  different  individuals  (p.  107). 


86 


THE  MEANING  OF 


section  of  Sir  Oliver  Lodge’s  catechism 
from  which  I  have  just  quoted  one  phrase. 
Mr.  Campbell  does  not  shrink  from  the 
plainest  statement  of  the  obvious  conclu¬ 
sions  of  this  doctrine.  Two  quotations  will 
make  this  evident. 

General  Booth  is  divine  in  so  far  as  love  is  the 
governing  principle  of  his  life.  Jesus  was  divine 
simply  and  solely  because  His  life  was  never  gov¬ 
erned  by  any  other  principle.  We  do  not  need  to 
talk  of  two  natures  in  Him,  or  to  think  of  a  mysterious 
dividing  line  on  one  side  of  which  He  was  human  and 
on  the  other  divine.  In  Him  humanity  was  divinity 
and  divinity  was  humanity.1 

Traditional  orthodoxy  would  restrict  the  descrip¬ 
tion  ‘  God  manifest  in  the  flesh  *  to  J esus  alone  ;  the 
New  Theology  would  extend  it  in  a  lesser  degree  to 
all  humanity,  and  would  maintain  that  in  the  end  it 
will  be  as  true  of  every  individual  soul  as  ever  it  wras 
of  Jesus.  Indeed  it  is  this  belief  which  gives  value 
and  significance  to  the  earthly  mission  of  Jesus.  He 
came  to  show  us  what  we  potentially  are.  a 

It  is  plain  that  such  an  idea  of  the  in¬ 
carnation  as  is  here  presented,  while  it  has 
in  it  much  that  is  very  close  to  the  biblical 
idea,  is  at  the  root  fundamentally  different. 
And  the  difference  follows  on  from  the 

1  The  New  Theology ,  pp.  75-6.  2  ibid.,  pp.  83-4. 


§7 


Christ’s  divinity 

difference  in  the  conception  of  God.  If 
divinity  and  humanity  are  fundamentally 
identical,  the  same  reality  viewed  from 
above  and  from  below,1  or  if  ‘  whatever  else 
He  may  be,  God  is  essentially  man,’  2  the 
doctrine  of  incarnation  stated  above  is 
the  only  one  possible.  On  the  other  hand 
the  idea  of  the  incarnation  contained  in  the 
New  Testament  and  the  creeds  is  based  on 
the  assumption,  which  we  find  everywhere 
in  the  Bible,  that  there  is  no  difference  so 
fundamental  as  that  between  the  creator 
and  the  creature  ;  and  that  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  the  Christ,  is  in  His  own  proper 
person  God,  the  Son  of  God,  ‘  integral  to 
the  being  of  God,’  in  a  sense  in  which  no 
other  man  can  possibly  be ;  even  though 
the  abundance  of  the  divine  love  should 
give  to  all  men  of  goodwill  such  fellowship, 
through  Christ,  in  God,  that  we  all  become 
in  Him  4  sons  of  God  ’  and  ‘  partakers  of 
the  divine  nature.’ 

That  is  my  point.  A  doctrine  which 
says  ‘  Christ  is  God  ’  and  then  goes  on  to 
say  ‘  all  men  are  God  ’  is  really,  I  fear, 

1  The  New  Theology ,  p.  75. 

2  ibid.,  p.  S9.  Mr.  Campbell  adds :  ‘  Because  He  is  the 
fount  of  humanity  ’ — i.e.  there  is  no  difference  in  essence. 


88 


THE  MEANING  OF 


farther  off  the  Bible  and  the  creeds  than  the 
old-fashioned  Unitarianism  which  said  that 
Christ  is  not  God.  For  the  old-fashioned 
Unitarianism,  in  its  best  exponents,  had  at 
least  a  fundamental  agreement  with  the 
Christian  church  up  to  a  certain  point — in 
its  doctrine  of  God,  and  of  His  relation  to 
the  world  and  to  mankind.  But  teaching 
which  fundamentally  identifies  Godhead 
and  manhood  can  never  come  near  to  being 
really  Christian  or  biblical. 

The  view  which  the  Christian  church  has 
taken  of  Christ’s  person,  and  His  relation 
to  His  fellow  men,  may  be  stated  in  outline 
thus  : 

God  made  man  for  sonship  to  Himself, 
that  is,  capable  of  communion  with  God, 
and  of  intelligent  correspondence  with 
God’s  purpose  in  His  kingdom  of  this 
world,  where  he  was  made  vicegerent.  He 
must,  we  feel,  have  been  destined,  per¬ 
haps  by  some  process  of  orderly  evolution, 
for  a  fullness  of  union  with  God  such  as 
has  actually  been  revealed  to  us  in  Christ, 
even  if  there  had  been  no  sin,  and  conse¬ 
quently  no  need  of  redemption.  This,  how¬ 
ever,  must  remain  a  matter  of  speculation. 
What  we  know  is  only  what  has  actually 


Christ’s  divinity  89 

taken  place,  and  that  is  necessarily  seen 
on  a  background  of  human  sin. 

For  mankind  was  disloyal.  Men  dis¬ 
ordered  their  own  natures  bv  self-will,  and 
introduced  the  disorder  of  their  lawlessness 
into  the  world  where  they  were  set  to 
exercise  their  dominion.  The  evil  of  sin 
is  so  radical  in  human  nature,  it  goes  so  deep 
to  the  heart  and  foundation  of  manhood, 
that  no  remedy  could  be  adequate  save 
what  must  be  expressed  in  such  words  as 
‘  re-creation  ’  or  ‘  regeneration.’  That  is 
to  say,  in  other  words,  that  God  who  made 
man  must  remake  him.  God  was,  all 
along,  ‘  in  the  world,’  and  in  man,  therefore, 
as  part  of  the  world,  sustaining  him  even 
in  the  life  which  he  was  misusing.  More¬ 
over,  He  never  left  Himself  without  witness; 
He  was  always  ‘  the  light  of  men  ’  in 
conscience,  even  amidst  the  darkness  of 
his  errors,  even  when  ‘  the  darkness  ’ 
seemed  to  come  near  upon  ‘  overcoming  ’ 
or  overwhelming  the  light.  And  He  was 
always  ‘  coming  ’  to  man  by  His  prophets 
and  messengers  in  fuller  communications  of 
His  will  and  character.  Then  at  last  ‘  he 
came.’ 1  He  entered  by  a  new  and  wonder- 

1  John  i.  1-14. 


90 


THE  MEANING  OF 


ful  manner  of  union  into  human  nature  to 
redeem  it  from  within.  He  was  born — 
taking  a  human  nature  of  the  substance  of 
a  human  mother — true  man  but  new  man  ; 
in  a  perfect  manhood,  both  to  reveal  all 
that  can  be  disclosed  of  God  in  manhood, 
and  to  reveal  our  manhood  in  the  highest 
union  with  Godhead  that  can  be  even 
imagined.  Thus  He  lived  very  God,  but 
under  conditions  of  manhood  and  human 
experience,  a  true  human  life — hiding  not 
Himself  from  his  own  flesh,  but  bearing  all 
the  burden  of  a  proper  manhood  in  a  world 
of  sin.  He  makes  His  life,  what  man’s  life 
should  be — a  free-will  offering  to  God  His 
Father  ;  and  when  the  sin  of  man  rejected 
Him  and  put  Him  to  death,  He  was  obedient, 
with  a  perfect  human  obedience,  unto 
death,  and  thus  sealed  His  sacrifice  in  blood. 
And  the  Father  spared  not  His  Son,  but 
accepted  His  self-sacrifice,  and,  in  Him, 
accepted  our  manhood  ;  and  when  He  died 
and  was  buried,  raised  Him  from  the  dead, 
and  glorified  Him — still  in  our  manhood — 
and  exalted  Him  to  His  own  right  hand, 
there  to  become  the  head  of  the  redeemed 
race  of  mankind  ;  for  by  His  Spirit,  the  spirit 
of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  sent  down  into 


91 


Christ’s  divinity 

the  hearts  of  men,  He  unites  the  sons  of 
faith  together  into  the  fellowship  of  His 
manhood,  in  His  society,  the  church,  which 
is  His  body. 

That  is  the  faith  of  the  Church.  ‘  I 
believe  in  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  only- 
begotten  Son  of  God,  very  God  of  very 
God,  who  for  us  men  and  for  our  salvation 
came  down  from  heaven  and  was  incarnate 
by  the  Holy  Ghost  of  the  Virgin  Mary  and 
was  made  man.’ 

There  is  no  question  that,  though  this 
divine  action  reaches  in  its  effects  as  far 
as  the  sovereignty  of  God,  backwards  to 
the  beginning,  and  forwards  to  the  end, 
it  is  yet  an  historical  event,  occurring  at  a 
certain  point  of  time,  when  Jesus  of  Naza¬ 
reth  lived  and  died  and  rose  again — essen¬ 
tially  and  necessarily  unique.  It  is  plain 
also  that  in  the  sense  in  which  Jesus  Christ 
is,  in  this  creed,  divine,  no  other  of  the 
sons  of  men  can  conceivably  be  so.  It  is 
plain,  once  more,  that  this  view  of  the 
incarnation  of  God  in  Christ  as  something 
necessarily  unique  follows  from  the  doctrine 
of  God  which  belongs  to  the  Christian  creed  ; 
just  as  the  belief  in  the  incarnation  of  God 
in  mankind  generally,  with  Jesus  only  for 


92 


THE  MEANING  OF 


the  completest  instance  of  what  is  really  to 
come  about  in  every  man,  follows  from  the 
belief  in  God  as  immanent  in  the  world,  and 
not  to  be  otherwise  thought  of  or  known. 

Are  we,  then,  to  substitute  the  view  of 
the  New  Theology  for  the  doctrine  of  Christ 
in  the  creeds  ?  No  doubt  in  part  this 
issue  has  been  determined,  so  far  as  we 
have  determined  to  adhere  to  the  faith  of 
the  Church  about  the  being  of  God  and  the 
meaning  of  sin.  But,  looking  at  the  doctrine 
of  Christ  by  itself,  what  are  we  to  say  ? 

Mr.  Campbell  dismisses  the  doctrine  of 
the  creed  with  a  contempt  which  is  not  very 
impressive  on  the  ground  that  it  ‘  puts  an 
impassable  gulf  at  once  between  Jesus 
and  every  other  person/  1  How  is  it,  then, 
with  the  experience  of  mankind  since  the 
apostles  taught  them  to  believe  the  creed  ? 
Have  they  found  an  impassable  gulf  put 
between  them  and  the  Son  of  Man  ? 

Has  any  of  the  sons  of  men  who  lived  long 
ago,  and  was  man  and  nothing  more,  been 
near  to  the  men  of  later  ages,  in  felt  power 
and  influence,  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  believed 
to  be  indeed  God  incarnate,  has  been  ?  Has 
any  example  been  as  close  to  men  since  He 

1  The  New  Theology,  p.  8 o. 


Christ’s  divinity 


93 


walked  in  Galilee,  as  His  example  ?  Nay, 
with  the  profoundest  conviction  I  am  sure 
that  the  view  which  declares  Christ  to  be 
what  we  are,  and  essentially  nothing  more, 
only  the  supreme  specimen  of  manhood — 
it  is  this  view  which,  should  it  prevail, 
would  be  found  to  separate  Him  from  us 
by  an  impassable  gulf.  He  would  then  be 
separated  from  us,  as  men  of  other  races 
or  remote  times  are  separated ;  or,  again, 
He  would  be  separated  from  us  as  the  men 
of  supreme  genius  of  any  kind  are  separated 
from  ordinary  men.  If  men  came  to  think 
of  Jesus  Christ  as,  in  the  world  of  moral 
character,  what  a  Dante  or  a  Shakespeare 
are  in  the  world  of  poetry,  the  power  of 
His  example  would  be  as  little  effective  for 
us,  as  the  power  of  the  example  of  any  other 
unique  and  solitary  genius.  The  more 
perfect  it  is,  the  more  totally  outside  our 
range  it  seems.  But  the  example  of  Jesus, 
sinless  and  perfect  as  He  was  on  earth, 
is  perpetually  brought  near  to  every  child 
of  man.  Because  He  who  set  them  the 
example  of  a  perfect  life,  does  also  by  His 
Spirit  ever  work  inwardly  in  the  heart  of 
every  one  of  His  members,  to  mould  them 
inwardly  into  the  likeness  of  the  example 


94 


THE  MEANING  OF 


which  ever  lives  before  their  eyes  outwardly. 
Thus  it  is  that  Christ,  through  nineteen 
centuries,  has  ever  been  brought  near  to 
the  humblest  of  the  sons  of  men — yes, 
brought  near  to  them  as  man  to  man — and 
His  example  has  been  made  effective  as 
an  inspiration  and  a  power.  But  all  this, 
only  because  this  Christ,  who  was  and  is  very 
man,  was  also  and  antecedently  very  God, 
and  the  bestower  of  the  life-giving  Spirit, 
and  is  able  thus  to  give  to  His  manhood  a 
universal  applicability,  a  universal  exten¬ 
sion  and  access,  which,  if  it  had  been  only 
the  manhood  of  one  man  among  many,  it 
could  never  have  had. 

Moreover,  the  idea  which  the  catholic 
creeds  embody  of  a  great  recreative  act 
of  God  to  restore  from  its  foundations  a 
ruined  manhood  corresponds  to  the  real 
need  of  man,  as  the  deepest-seeing  men  have 
realized  it.  Philosophers,  from  Plato  to 
Carlyle,  have  been  found  scoffing  at  contem¬ 
porary  reformers  because  their  proposed 
reforms  did  not,  and  could  not,  go  deep 
enough  to  get  at  the  root  of  the  evil  in 
human  society.1  What  is  wanted,  they  have 

1  See  Carlyle,  Past  and  Present,  bk.  i.,  c.  4,  *  Morrison’s 
Pill,’  and  the  argument  of  Plato’s  Republic. 


95 


Christ’s  divinity 

declared,  is  in  some  sense  a  fresh  start  for 
humanity,  and  a  new  birth.  So  the  moral 
philosophers  have  reasoned — in  words.  But 
it  is  Jesus  alone,  and  He  only  as  believed  in 
by  the  church,  who  has  in  any  adequate 
sense  translated  this  logical  and  moral 
requirement  into  actual  reality.  In  Him 
we  see  moving  among  men  a  true  man, 
truly  the  Son  of  Man.  But  the  perfection 
of  His  manhood  is  found  in  its  sinlessness — 
in  that  which  separates  Him  from  all  other 
men,  in  that  which  makes  His  moral 
consciousness  so  profoundly  different  from 
that  of  Isaiah  or  Jeremiah,  or  St.  Peter, 
or  St.  Paul,  or  any  other  of  the  greatest 
and  best  of  His  disciples,  who,  the  greater 
and  better  they  were,  have  felt  only  the 
more  profoundly  their  sinfulness  and  their 
fallibility.  It  is  true  manhood  we  see  in 
the  sinless  Jesus,  but  new  manhood  :  a 
second  Adam  in  diviner  power  to  redress 
the  balance  of  the  first.  And  by  faith  in  Him 
men  of  all  times  and  races  can  obtain  what 
is  the  fundamental  moral  need  of  their 
nature— not  only  a  standard  of  manhood, 
but  a  new  birth  in  spirit  and  power. 

Now  we  have  to  ask  the  question  whether 
the  conception  of  Christ  which  is  pre- 


96 


THE  MEANING  OF 


sented  to  us  in  the  catholic  creed  is  really 
warranted  by  the  facts,  so  far  as  historical 
inquiry  can  present  them  to  us,  in  the 
records  of  the  New  Testament ;  or  whether, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  can  find  traces  of 
a  merely  human  Christ  gradually  divinized 
by  the  pious  imagination  of  the  church, 
or  of  a  Christ  divine  only  as  other  men  are 
divine. 

First,  then,  let  us  inquire  what  the  first 
Christians  thought  about  Christ.  We  go 
first  to  the  epistles  of  St.  Paul,  and  we  find 
there  that  St.  Paul  consistently  and  with¬ 
out  doubt  interprets  Christ’s  person  in  the 
sense  of  the  creeds. 

He  was  God’s  ‘  own  ’  Son,  before  He 
was  ‘  sent  forth,  in  the  fullness  of  the  time, 
born  of  a  woman,  that  he  might  redeem 
us  men,  that  we  might  receive  the  adoption 
of  sons.’  1  ‘  Existing  originally  in  the  form, 
or  essential  characteristics,  of  God,  he 
thought  not  equality  with  God  a  prize  to 
be  clutched  at,  but  emptied  himself,  or  im¬ 
poverished  himself,  and  took  the  form  or 
essential  characteristics  of  a  servant,  and 
was  made  in  the  likeness  of  men  ;  and 
being  found  in  fashion  as  a  man,  he 

1  Gal.  iv.  4 ;  Rom.  viii.  32. 


97 


Christ’s  divinity 

humbled  Himself  and  became  obedient, 
unto  death,  even  the  death  of  the  cross. 
Wherefore  God  also  exalted  him  (in  the 
human  nature  which  He  had  assumed) 
and  bestowed  upon  him  the  name  that  is 
above  every  name :  that  at  the  name  of 
Jesus  every  knee  should  bow,  of  things  in 
heaven,  and  things  in  earth,  and  things 
under  the  earth  ;  and  every  tongue  should 
confess  that  Jesus  Christ  is  Lord.’  1  Once 
more :  ‘  In  him  were  all  things  created,  in 
the  heavens  and  upon  the  earth,  things 
visible  and  things  invisible,  whether  thrones 
or  dominions  or  principalities  or  powers  ; 
all  things  have  been  created  through  him 
and  unto  him ;  and  he  is  before  all 
things,  and  in  him  all  things  consist.’  2 
It  was  only  because  He  existed  thus  in  His 
eternal  being  and  in  the  universe  that, 
when  He  was  made  man  and  glorified,  it 
could  be  the  Father’s  pleasure  ‘  that  all 
the  fullness  of  the  Godhead  should  dwell  in 
him  bodily,’  3  and  that  He  should  be  set 
‘  far  above  all  rule,  and  authority,  and 
power,  and  dominion,  and  every  name  that 
is  named,  not  only  in  this  world,  but  also 

Phil.  ii.  6-i  i,  2  Cor.  viii.  9.  2  Col.  i.  16,  17. 

3  Col.  i.  19,  ii.  9. 


7 


98 


THE  MEANING  OF 


in  that  which  is  to  come  ;  and  that  all 
things  should  be  put  in  subjection  under 
his  feet,  who  is  the  head  over  all  things  to 
the  church,  which  is  his  body.’  1 

This  is  not  a  full  account  of  St.  Paul's 
doctrine  of  Christ,  but  it  is  sufficient  to 
show  that  what  St.  Paul  believed  about 
Christ  makes  Him  indeed  ‘  integral  to  the 
being  of  God,’  and  that  he  could  not 
possibly  use  such  language  about  any 
other.  ‘  To  us  there  is  one  God,  the 
Father,  of  whom  are  all  things  and  we  unto 
him  ;  and  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  through 
whom  are  all  things  and  we  through  him.'  2 

Moreover,  there  does  not  appear  to  have 
been  any  discussion  in  the  church  on  the 
matter  of  belief  about  Christ.  St.  Paul 
was  in  controversy  with  the  Christian  Jews 
of  Jerusalem  on  many  points  ;  but  there 
appears  to  have  been  no  controversy  with 
regard  to  the  interpretation  to  be  given 
to  the  person  of  Christ.  The  same  doc¬ 
trine  of  Christ — the  doctrine  which  makes 
Him  properly  divine  as  well  as  human — 
appears  in  the  most  Jewish  of  the  New 
Testament  books,  the  Apocalypse,3  as  well 

1  Eph.  i.  21,  22.  2  i  Cor.  viii.  6. 

8  See  Swete’s  Apocalypse  (Macmillan),  pp.  clvi.  f. 


99 


Christ’s  divinity 

as  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  in 
the  Epistle  of  Peter,  and  in  the  Fourth 
Gospel. 

Was,  then,  this  stupendous  doctrine 
about  one  who  had  been  seen  and  touched 
and  heard  as  man  among  men,  who  had 
eaten  and  drunken  and  died  and  been 
buried  as  man  in  a  human  body — was  it 
based  upon  His  own  witness,  the  witness 
of  His  own  human  lips  ? 

Now,  we  have  the  strongest  historical 
grounds  for  asserting  that  the  Fourth  Gospel 
was  written  in  his  old  age  by  one  who  had 
moved  in  the  innermost  circle  of  the  dis¬ 
ciples  of  Jesus  in  Judaea  and  Galilee,  when 
He  was  among  them  ;  and  also  that  he  was 
none  other  than  John,  the  son  of  Zebedee. 
So  that  we  have  in  this  Gospel  a  living 
memory  of  ‘  the  disciple  whom  Jesus 
loved.’  If  this  be  so,  as  I  certainly  be¬ 
lieve,  we  cannot  doubt  that  our  Lord  Him¬ 
self  had,  even  if  only  rarely,  confessed 
in  unmistakable  terms  His  own  divine 
and  eternal  Sonship.  ‘  I  and  my  Father 
are  one,’  ‘  He  that  hath  seen  me  hath 
seen  the  Father.’ 1  But,  without  dwelling 

1  John.  x.  30,  xiv.  9.  It  is  impossible  to  maintain 
that  St.  John  would  have  tolerated  the  idea  of  such 


IOO 


THE  MEANING  OF 


upon  this  now,  as  you  will  know  it  to  be 
in  dispute  among  critics,  I  prefer  to  rest 
our  case  upon  the  first  three  Gospels,  which 
present  us  with  the  memorials  of  Christ 
as  they  were  treasured  in  the  church  of 
the  thirty  or  forty  years  after  our  Lord’s 
death,  the  church  in  which  His  apostles 
lived  and  worked  and  taught. 

Do  we  find  there  the  humanitarian  Christ, 
a  Christ  divine  possibly,  but  only  as  all 
other  men  are  divine  ?  Or  do  we  find 
there  the  Christ  of  the  church’s  belief  ? 

I  speak  the  honest  truth,  I  can  hardly 
tell  you  how  often,  with  the  whole  sincerity 
of  which  I  am  capable,  I  have  asked  my¬ 
self  that  question,  and  reinvestigated  it 
anew  to  the  very  utmost  of  my  power,  and 
always  with  a  renewed  certainty  of  assur¬ 
ance  that  the  humanity  of  our  Lord,  as  you 
find  it  recorded  in  the  pages  of  the  Synoptic 


phrases  being  put  into  the  mouth  of  other  men  to 
signify  that  manhood  and  Godhead  are  at  bottom  one 
and  the  same  thing.  Thus  he  wholly  differentiates 
between  John  the  Baptist,  with  his  assuredly  divine 
mission,  and  Christ,  with  His  divine  origin  (John  iii. 
28-36),  or  between  the  divine  Sonship  of  Christ — ‘  God 
only  begotten  ’-—and  the  divine  sonship,  the  title  to 
which  He  communicates  to  those  who  believe  in  Him  or 
are  in  Him  new-born  (John  i.  1-18). 


IOI 


Christ’s  divinity 

Gospels,  is  not  capable  of  any  other  inter¬ 
pretation,  if  you  are  fair  to  the  evidence, 
than  that  which  the  first  Christian  church 
gave  it.  I  admit,  of  course — indeed,  I  do 
more  than  admit — that  it  was  not  suddenly 
and  all  at  once  that  the  first  Christians 
leaped  to  the  clear  consciousness  of  what 
was  contained  in  their  creed,  as  you  find  it 
a  little  later  in  St.  Paul  and  St.  John.  Im¬ 
mediately  after  the  resurrection  they  are 
occupied  solely  with  the  thought  of  the 
Messiahship  of  Christ,  as  foretold  in  Old 
Testament  prophecies.  So  great  and  over¬ 
whelming  a  thought  as  that  of  the  in¬ 
carnation  is  not  suddenly  to  be  grasped 
by  men’s  minds,  if  it  is  to  be  grasped 
healthily.  But  it  was  held  by  the  Christian 
church  under  the  full  influence  of  the 
apostles,  and  if  we  ask  whether  the  be¬ 
lief  was  justified  by  what  they  had  actually 
seen  in  our  Lord  and  heard  from  our  Lord, 
I  say,  with  complete  assurance,  that  it  was. 

I  am  now  assuming  that  these  Gospels 
are  substantially  true.  But  I  do  not  ask 
any  kind  of  exemption  for  any  historical 
document  from  free  historical  criticism.  If 
you  reach  the  conclusion  that  the  Gospels 
are  really  historical,  it  is  sometimes  assumed, 


102 


THE  MEANING  OF 


absurdly  enough,  that  you  are  trying  to 
exempt  them  from  criticism.  If  you  recog¬ 
nize  that  there  are  parts  of  the  Old  Testa¬ 
ment  which  are  not  historical,  though  they 
are  written  in  an  historical  form,  and 
then  go  on  to  declare  that  you  believe  the 
Gospels  are  strictly  historical,  people  will 
say  that  you  are  trying  to  allow  criticism 
of  the  Old  Testament  documents,  and  to 
disallow  it  in  the  case  of  the  New.  That 
is  really  quite  meaningless.  In  every  his¬ 
tory  of  every  nation  you  recognize  that 
there  are  different  stages  of  historicity,  in 
proportion  to  the  character  and  nearness 
of  the  evidence.  You  do  not  say,  because 
you  are  doubtful  about  the  history  of  King 
Arthur,  that  therefore  vou  cannot  be  cer- 
tain  about  the  history  of  King  Alfred,  or 
of  Richard  the  Second,  or  of  George  the 
Fourth.  The  historical  certainty  depends 
on  the  nature  and  closeness  of  the  evidence. 
I  do  not  ask  for  any  use  of  the  Gospels 
which  is  not  in  accordance  with  the  strictest 
requirements  of  historical  evidence.  I  do 
not  make  any  claim  for  them  except  what 
is  made  in  St.  Luke’s  preface — namely,  that 
he  has  done  his  best  to  draw  up  the  most 
authentic  narrative  from  first-hand  evidence : 


ci-irist’s  divinity  103 

Forasmuch  as  many  have  taken  in  hand  to  draw 
up  a  narrative  concerning  those  matters  which  have 
been  fulfilled  among  us,  even  as  they  delivered  them 
unto  us,  which  from  the  beginning  were  eyewitnesses 
and  ministers  of  the  word,  it  seemed  good  to  me  also, 
having  traced  the  course  of  all  things  accurately  from 
the  first,  to  write  unto  thee  in  order,  most  excellent 
Theophilus,  that  thou  mightest  know  the  certainty 
concerning  the  things  wherein  thou  wast  in¬ 
structed. 

I  believe  that  self- witness  of  St.  Luke, 
the  Christian  physician  and  companion  of 
St.  Paul,  to  be  exactly  true.  I  believe  that 
in  his  Gospel,  as  also  in  St.  Mark,  and 
in  the  first  Gospel,  you  really  have,  written 
down  by  honest  recorders,  the  evidence  of 
those  who  had  been  with  our  Lord,  eye¬ 
witnesses  of  His  life  and  works,  as  well  as 
ministers  of  the  word. 

Well,  then,  let  us  look  at  the  picture. 
And  first,  at  Christ’s  sinlessness.  What  a 
stupendous  fact  that  is  !  Read  the  Old 
Testament,  and  hear  how  every  prophet, 
in  proportion  as  he  is  holy,  feels  his  sinful¬ 
ness.  Hear  how  St.  Paul  feels  it,  and  cries 
out  under  the  pain  of  it  ;  how  St.  John 
impugns  any  one  who  says  that  he  is  not 
sinful :  ‘  If  we  say  that  we  have  no  sin,  we 

deceive  ourselves,  and  the  truth  is  not  in 


104  THE  MEANING  of 

us/  1  See  how  the  angelic  messenger  in 
St.  John  is  represented  as  jealous  for  the 
divine  glory  of  God,  refusing  all  acts  of 
worship  :  ‘  See  thou  do  it  not ;  I  am  a 
fellowservant  with  thee,  and  with  thy 
brethren  the  prophets  .  .  .  worship  God/ 2 
And  then  think  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  as 
He  moved  among  men,  conscious  of  sin¬ 
lessness,  never  by  word  or  deed  giving  any 
indication  of  that  sense  of  liability  to 
error  and  sin  which  has  belonged  to  the 
whole  human  race  apart  from  Him,  and 
with  deepening  intensity  in  proportion  as 
men  have  been  good  and  religious. 

Think  of  the  way  in  which  He  trained 
men  to  trust  in  Him  ;  how  deliberately 
and  gradually  He  trained  His  disciples  to 
believe  in  Him,  to  put  their  whole  trust  in 
Him,  as  in  one  who  was  capable  of  pro¬ 
viding  for  them  in  body  and  in  spirit, 
capable  of  supplying  and  satisfying  all 
their  spiritual  needs,  as  well  as  helping  them 
in  all  physical  distresses,  by  His  love  and 
power.  By  no  single  or  sudden  word,  but 
by  the  whole  process  of  His  training,  He 
brought  them  to  regard  Him  as  that 
which  God  only  can  be  for  the  soul  of  man 

1  i  John  i.  8.  2  Rev.  xxii.  8,  9. 


■ 


Christ’s  divinity  105 

— its  adequate  repose  :  *  I  will  give  you 
rest/ 

Think  of  the  authority  with  which  He 
spoke — ‘  No  man  knoweth  the  Son  save 
the  Father ,  neither  knoweth  any  man  the 
Father,  save  the  Son,  and  he  to  whom¬ 
soever  the  Son  willeth  to  reveal  him/  1 
Think  of  the  authority  with  which  He  set 
aside  what  lawgiver  and  prophet  had  said 
of  old—*  It  wras  said  to  them  of  old  time  .  .  . 
but  I  say  unto  you/  2  Think  how,  in  the 
parable,  He  distinguishes  Himself,  as  the 
Son,  from  God’s  earlier  messengers,  who  are 
the  slaves.3 

Think,  above  all,  of  what  it  must  have 
been  to  those  disciples  to  be  constantly 
with  one  who  claimed  to  be  the  final  judge 
of  men  in  their  acts,  and  also  in  their  secret 
thoughts.  *  Many  shall  come  to  me  in 
that  day,  Lord,  Lord,  did  we  not  prophesy 
in  thy  name,  and  in  thy  name  do  many 
wonderful  works  ?  Then  will  I  (discerning 
their  secret  selves)  profess  unto  them,  I 
never  knew  you ;  depart  from  me/  4  *  Before 

1  Matt.  xxi.  36-37,  Mark  xii.  6,  Luke  xx.  12-13. 

2  Matt.  v.  21-22,  27-28,  33-34,  33-39,  43~44- 

3  Matt.  xi.  27,  Luke  x.  22. 

4  Matt.  vii.  21-22. 


106  THE  MEANING  OF 

him  shall  be  gathered  all  the  nations,  and 
he  shall  separate  them  one  from  another, 
as  the  shepherd  separateth  the  sheep 
from  the  goats.’1  Think,  I  say,  what  it 
would  be  to  keep  company  with  one  who 
in  His  innermost  consciousness  knew  Him¬ 
self,  and  declared  Himself  to  be,  the  final 
and  infallible  judge  of  all  men,  not  in  their 
outward  acts  only,  but  in  their  secret 
thoughts  also.  Such  experience  could  lead 
to  one  result  only  ;  it  did  lead  to  that  re¬ 
sult — that  they  came  to  believe  Him  to  be 
verily  and  indeed  what  the  creed  asserts 
Him  to  be,  what  the  unanimous  consent  of 
Christendom  has  declared  him  to  be — God, 
the  very  Son  of  God,  made  man. 

I  say  read,  and  re-read,  that  record  of 
Christ  in  the  Gospels,  and  ask  yourselves 
the  question — Is  not  the  old  dilemma  true  : 
either  He  was  God,  or  He  was  not  a  good 
man  ?  There  is,  I  suppose,  no  subtler,  at 
the  same  time  there  is  no  more  tremendous, 
sin  than  the  sin  of  one  stronger  spiritual 
nature  asserting  itself  in  ascendency  over 
others,  and  leading  them  to  put  in  that 
which  is  only  a  creature  the  reliance  and 
the  faith  which  is  due  to  the  Creator.  That 

1  Matt.  xxv.  32. 


io7 


Christ’s  divinity 

is  the  real  heart  of  the  worst  kind  of  sacer¬ 
dotal  tyranny.  Yet  we  cannot  escape  from 
the  conclusion  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  did, 
in  His  training  of  the  disciples,  deliberately 
put  Himself  in  that  place  in  their  hearts 
which  would  have  involved  the  supreme 
usurpation,  had  it  not  been  the  only 
legitimate  place  for  Him  who  was  really 
both  their  brother  and  their  God. 

Must  we  not  conclude,  then,  that  the 
Christian  interpretation  of  the  person  of 
Christ,  the  interpretation  accepted  by  con¬ 
sent  in  the  time  of  St.  Paul,  is  the  inter¬ 
pretation  which  the  facts,  when  you  scan 
and  scrutinize  them,  warrant — the  only 
interpretation  which  is  really  compatible 
with  those  facts  ?  If  we  accept  this  con¬ 
clusion,  we  do  indeed  accept  a  belief  in 
Christ  as  divine  in  a  sense  in  which  no  other 
man  is  or  could  be  divine  ;  but  we  are  led  on 
by  a  safer  route  than  that  of  the  New 
Theology,  to  an  extension  of  the  incarnation 
of  God  to  all  humanity.  For  it  was  not  for 
Himself  that  the  eternal  Son  took  our  man¬ 
hood  :  it  was  that  all  other  men,  through 
faith  in  Him  and  new  birth  into  Him,  might 
become,  in  their  measure,  partakers  of  the 
divine  nature.  The  incarnation  waits  for 


108  THE  MEANING  OF  CHRIST’S  DIVINITY 

its  fulfilment  upon  the  completion  of  the 
body  of  Christ,  which  is  the  church  universal, 
till  God  is  manifested  in  the  whole  of  the 
redeemed  humanity,  in  the  new  heaven  and 
the  new  earth  wherein  dwelleth  righteous¬ 
ness. 


LECTURE  VI 

MIRACLES 

The  next  point  on  which  we  are  to  con¬ 
trast  the  New  Theology  with  the  creed  of 
the  old  religion  is  in  the  matter  of  miracles. 
It  is  plain  enough  that  if  we  think  of  God 
as  the  soul  of  the. world,  manifesting  Him¬ 
self  only  in  the  orderly  development  of 
the  universe  ;  and  of  Christ  as  only  the 
supreme  instance  of  what  all  men  in 
principle  are,  or  are  becoming ;  we  cannot 
but  feel  a  sort  of  intellectual  resentment  in 
face  of  the  claim  for  certain  abnormal  and 
unique  events  to  be  believed  in  the  case  of 
J  esus  Christ — His  birth  of  a  virgin,  for 
instance,  or  the  resurrection  of  His  body 
on  the  third  day  from  the  tomb,  as  well  as 
the  miracles  which  He  is  recorded  to  have 
wrought  on  others.  For  such  events  force 
us  to  think  of  God  as  acting  in  or  upon  the 
world  independently  of  its  normal  order  or 
sequence.  They  are  miracles — supposed 


109 


I  IO 


MIRACLES 


events  which  the  order  of  the  world  and  of 
man  cannot  account  for.  Thus  the  tendency 
of  the  New  Theology  is  to  depreciate  the 
spiritual  value  of  the  belief  in  miracles,  to 
criticize  the  evidence  for  them,  and  to  deny 
that  they  actually  occurred.  The  teachers 
of  this  school  would  indeed  admit  that  the 
minds  or  wills  of  certain  more  or  less  ex¬ 
ceptional  men  may  exercise  exceptional 
power  over  the  body — their  own  bodies  or 
those  of  other  men.  Such  are  the  phe¬ 
nomena  of  ‘  suggestion  ’  and  ‘  faith  healing.’ 
And  modern  critical  writers  have  a  ten¬ 
dency  to  accept  certain  of  the  recorded 
miracles  of  Jesus,  and  to  explain  them  as 
a  form  of  ‘  mental  therapeutics.’ 

4  That  He  should  have  had  power  to  cure 
nervous  diseases  by  words  of  power  or  by  a 
spiritual  predominance  is  perfectly  natural.’ 
So  writes  Prof.  Gardner.1  And  Prof. 
Harnack  : 2  ‘  In  our  present  state  of  know¬ 
ledge  we  have  become  more  careful  (than 
earlier  critics),  more  hesitating  in  our 
judgement,  in  regard  to  the  stories  of  the 
miraculous  which  we  have  received  from 
antiquity.  That  the  earth  in  its  course 

1  The  Growth  of  Christianity  (Black),  p.  75. 

2  What  is  Christianity  ?  (Williams  &  Norgate),  p.  29. 


MIRACLES 


I  I  1 


stood  still,  that  a  she-ass  spoke,  that 
a  storm  was  quieted  by  a  word,  we  do  not 
believe,  and  we  shall  never  again  believe  ; 
but  that  the  lame  walked,  the  blind  saw, 
and  the  deaf  heard,  will  not  be  so  summarily 
dismissed  as  an  illusion. * 

The  miracles  of  healing  are  therefore,  on 
the  whole,  accepted  as  possible,  and  treated 
as  instances  of  the  exceptional  spiritual 
power  of  J  esus  over  the  bodies  of  other  men 
suffering  from  what  are  called  ‘  functional 
diseases  of  the  nervous  system  ’ — instances, 
that  is,  of  what  occurs  in  a  whole  class  of 
recognized  events,  which  are  popularly 
grouped  as  cases  of  faith-healing.  A 
medical  authority1  has  recently  examined 
this  theory,  and  shown  good  reasons  for 
denying  that  our  Lord’s  miracles  of  healing 
can  be  accounted  for  on  the  neurotic  theory. 
But,  besides  this,  it  must  be  noticed  that 
the  earliest  record  of  the  ministry  of  Christ 
contains,  side  by  side  with  the  miracles 
which  it  is  proposed  thus  to  explain, 
nature  miracles — such  as  the  feeding  of  the 
multitudes,  and  the  walking  upon  the 
water,  and  the  withering  of  the  fig-tree,  to 

1  Dr.  R.  J.  Ryle,  in  th e  Hibbert  Journal ,  April,  1907, 
‘  The  Neurotic  Theory  of  the  Miracles  of  Healing.’ 


1 1  2 


MIRACLES 


which  such  an  explanation  is  totally 
inapplicable,  but  which  rest  on  absolutely 
the  same  basis  of  evidence.  So  that  the 
problem  cannot  be  thus  dealt  with.  And 
miracles  which  resist  any  such  neurotic 
explanation,  Prof.  Harnack  declares,  ‘  We 
do  not  believe,  and  we  shall  never  again 
believe/  I  am  thankful  to  recognize  that 
Mr.  Campbell,  in  the  case  of  our  Lord’s 
physical  resurrection,  is  not  thus  peremp¬ 
tory.  He  is  inclined  to  admit  it.1  But  he 
owns  that  his  friends  will  not  generally 
agree  with  him.  And  the  adherents  of  the 
movement  are  unanimous  in  repudiating 
the  belief  in  the  virgin  birth. 

On  the  other  hand,  those  who  hold  to 
the  idea  of  God  which  finds  expression  in 
the  creed,  believe  that,  though  He  is  mani¬ 
fested  in  the  order  of  the  world,  He  is  not 
limited  by  it.  It  is  the  expression  of  a 
will  which  remains  unexhausted  and  in¬ 
dependent.  Now  it  is  doubtless  true  that 
a  perfect  will  must  always  so  act  as  that 
its  action  should  not  be  arbitrary,  but  the 
expression  of  perfect  law.  Thus  the  greatest 
Christian  thinkers  have  always  seen  that 
miracles  must  express  and  not  violate  the 

1  The  New  Theolgoy,  pp.  220  £f. 


MIRACLES 


I  13 

order  of  the  world,  in  the  deepest  sense  in 
which  the  order  of  the  world  is  the  mind 
of  God.1  But  we  recognize  at  the  same 
time  that  abnormal  circumstances  require 
in  a  free  being  abnormal  actions. 

A  man  of  high  intelligence,  though  his 
normal  action  will  be  methodical  and 
orderly,  retains  his  liberty  to  deal  with  an 
exceptional  situation  by  some  unusual  and 
striking  mode  of  action.  To  be  tied  to 
the  normal  and  the  habitual,  when  some¬ 
thing  exceptional  is  needed,  is  to  be  mecha¬ 
nical  and  not  rational. 

It  is  the  highest  order  of  rational  action, 
as  we  know  it  in  the  world,  which  is  our 
best  image  of  God’s  action,  and  not  mere 
mechanical  uniformity.  Thus  the  more 
fully  we  recognize  in  God  the  supremely  free 
personality  acting  in  the  world,  the  more 
ready  we  shall  be  to  accept  the  evidence 
for  exceptional  or  abnormal  action  on  God’s 
part  when  the  situation  demands  it. 

The  believer  in  the  faith  of  the  creed  sees 
in  the  circumstances  of  the  incarnation  a 
situation  essentially  unique.  Sin  had  dis¬ 
turbed  the  order  of  the  world.  It  had 

1  See  reff.  in  my  Bampton  lectures,  The  Incarnation 
oj  the  Son  of  God  (John  Murray),  p.  246. 


8 


MIRACLES 


I  14 

made  the  world,  so  far  as  man  controls  it, 
a  manifest  disorder.  Against  this  disorder 
God  is  represented  in  the  Old  Testament 
as  in  continual  protest  by  the  prophets. 
He  will  not,  however,  even  so,  deal  with 
man  so  as  to  destroy  his  liberty.  He  deals 
with  him  for  the  restoration  of  the  lost 
order,  morally,  by  an  appeal  to  his  will  and 
heart  and  mind.  The  incarnation  of  the 
Son  is  God’s  great  act  of  redemption,  or  re¬ 
creation,  to  restore  a  disordered  world.  It 
is  so  unique  a  divine  action,  in  so  abnormal 
a  situation,  that  it  cannot  surprise  us  if  it 
requires  something  more  than  God’s  cus¬ 
tomary  action  in  nature. 

In  some  such  way  as  this  we  may  argue 
that  the  admission  of  the  possibility  of 
miracle  is  bound  up  with  any  belief  in  God 
as  the  supreme,  and  supremely  free,  person¬ 
ality.  But  such  abstract  argument  takes 
us  but  a  little  way.  We  shall  do  better 
to  examine  the  records  and  see  whether 
there  is  real  reason  to  suppose  that  the 
miracles  actually  occurred,  and  what  kind 
of  appeal  they  are  intended  to  make  to  us. 

I  think  we  shall  find  the  evidence  of  the 
actual  occurrence  of  miracles  is  in  the  highest 
degree  cogent,  and  at  points  overwhelming. 


MIRACLES 


115 

We  are  not  now  concerned  with  miracles 
reported  from  other  ages,  but  with  those  of 
the  New  Testament — with  those  recorded 
in  connexion  with  the  manifestation  in 
the  world  of  the  Christ  of  God.  But  we  must 
extend  our  view  beyond  the  Gospels  to 
include  also  the  records  of  the  first  pro¬ 
clamation  of  Christ. 

For  we  find  St.  Paul  witnessing,  more 
than  once,  in  the  simplest  and  most  inci¬ 
dental  way,  to  the  ‘  power  of  signs  and 
wonders 1  which  accompanied  his  own 
preaching  1  and  which  he  regarded,  not  as 
peculiar  to  himself,  but  as  the  signs  of  an 
apostle.  And  this  witness  is  borne  out  in 
the  narrative  of  the  Acts. 

St.  Luke,  the  disciple  of  St.  Paul,  who 
certainly  wrote  the  Acts,  and  who  was  a 
physician,  accustomed  to  observe  diseases 
and  their  cures,  records  in  the  Acts  of  the 
Apostles  not  only  miracles  of  the  earlier 
period  which  were  reported  to  him,  but 
also  miracles  wrought  by  St.  Paul  when  he 
was  actually  with  the  apostle,  such  as  the 
raising  of  Eutychus  and  the  healing  of 
the  father  of  Publius.2 

1  Rom.  xv.  19,  2  Cor.  xii.  12. 

2  Acts  xx.  7ff.,xxviii.  8,9.  Notice  the '  we’  in  each  case. 


MIRACLES 


1 1 6 

Then  we  go  back  upon  the  miracles 
wrought  by  Christ,  and  we  take  note  that 
the  earliest  Gospel,  the  Gospel  of  Mark, 
which  we  have  the  best  reason  to  believe 
represents  the  preaching  of  Peter,  is  full  of 
these  miraculous  events,  some  of  which, 
as  has  already  been  said,  are  miracles  of 
power  over  nature,  which  can  be  in  no  way 
explained  by  the  influence  of  mind  over 
mind  ;  and  it  will  be  observed  that  these 
miracles  are  no  mere  portents  such  as 
Matthew  Arnold  ridiculed,  when  he  asked 
the  question  why  he  should  be  supposed  to 
make  an  improbable  statement  more  pro¬ 
bable  if  he  could  turn  his  pen  into  a  pen¬ 
wiper.  The  miracles  of  Christ  are  ‘  signs,’ 
counterparts  of  His  words,  teaching  the 
same  lesson  in  another  sphere.  In  fact, 
the  teaching  and  the  miracles  are  so  in¬ 
extricably  interwoven,  as  web  with  woof 
in  the  same  substance,  that  any  treatment 
of  the  narrative  which  seeks  to  discredit 
the  miracles  must  discredit  the  teaching 
also,  and  leave  us,  as  the  author  of  Ecce  Homo 
said  long  ago,  ‘  a  Christ  as  mythical  as 
Hercules.’  If  the  teaching  is  certainly 
authentic,  so,  we  are  bound  to  say,  are  ‘  the 
works  ’  also. 


MIRACLES 


ii  7 


So  natural  do  Christ’s  miracles — His 
‘  works/  as  they  are  called — seem  in  His 
case  that  we  are  inclined  to  interpret  them 
simply  as  the  laws  of  His  nature.  We  find 
that  each  higher  grade  of  nature  has  modes 
of  action  appropriate  to  it,  which  are  ‘  super¬ 
natural  ’  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
nature  which  lies  below — as  animal  life  is 
‘  supernatural  ’  to  inanimate  nature,  and 
human  action  to  the  nature  that  is  merely 
animal.  So  we  may  say  that  in  Christ  we 
have  a  higher  kind  of  nature  which  has  its 
own  new  laws  of  action.  These  are  Christ’s 
natural  works  ;  but  to  other  men  they  are 
miracles.1 

But,  on  the  whole,  this  is  not  the  way 
in  which  the  New  Testament  leads  us  to 
think  of  them.  They  are  more  often 
regarded  as  evidences  of  God  working  with 
Him,  evidences  that  the  divine  power 
which  rules  nature  was  supporting  Him  and 
witnessing  to  Him.2 

And  now  we  turn  to  the  miracles  which 
the  Christian  church  fastened  upon  to 
enshrine  in  its  central  creed  as  of  the  very 
substance  of  its  faith.  ‘  I  believe  that 
Jesus  Christ  was  conceived  by  the  Holy 

1  See  B  amp  ton  Lectures,  pp.  47-8.  2  Acts  ii.  22. 


1 1 8 


MIRACLES 


Ghost,  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary  .  .  .  that  He 
rose  again  the  third  day  from  the  dead  and 
ascended  into  heaven/ 

The  resurrection  of  Christ  occupies  evi¬ 
dentially  in  the  New  Testament  a  unique 
place.  ‘  He  was  declared  to  be  the  Son  of 
God  with  power,  according  to  a  spirit  of 
holiness,  by  the  resurrection  of  the  dead/  1 
‘  If  Christ  hath  not  been  raised  our  preach¬ 
ing  is  vain,  your  faith  also  is  vain/  2  So 
cries  St.  Paul.  And  St.  Peter — ‘  God  begat 
us  again  unto  a  living  hope  by  the  resur¬ 
rection  of  Jesus  Christ  from  the  dead/ 3 
It  was,  in  fact,  as  the  records  show,  and 
as  all  men  agree,  by  the  confident  belief 
of  the  apostles  that  Christ  had  been  re¬ 
peatedly  seen  by  them,  risen  from  the  dead, 
and  that  His  divine  sonship  and  mission 
was  thus  made  evident  by  His  triumph 
over  death,  that  the  foundation  of  the 
Christian  church  was  made  possible.  There 
is  also  no  doubt  that  this  was  understood 
to  mean  that  ‘in  the  same  body  in  which  He 
died  and  was  buried,  only  transmuted  into 
a  higher  state  and  power,  he  was  raised 
again.  St.  Paul's  words  imply  this 4 — 

1  Rom.  i.  4.  2  1  Cor.  xv.  14.  3  1  Pet.  i.  3. 

4  1  Cor.  xv.  3-4. 


MIRACLES 


119 


*  That  he  died,  and  that  he  was  buried, 
and  that  he  hath  been  raised  the  third 
day.’  This  phrase  describes  what  can 
only  be  a  physical  occurrence  to  the  body 
which  had  died  and  been  buried,  a  physical 
occurrence  at  a  particular  moment  of  time. 
No  apparition  in  another  body  would 
satisfy  this  language.  And  there  is  no 
event  in  the  Gospel  record  which  rests  on 
more  certain  ground  of  evidence  than  that 
the  women  who  came  early  to  the  sepulchre 
on  the  Easter  morning  found  the  tomb 
empty  of  the  dead  body. 

The  record  of  appearances  is  best  given 
in  St.  Paul’s  words.1 

Now  I  make  known  unto  you,  brethren,  the  gospel 
which  I  preached  unto  you,  which  also  ye  received, 
wherein  also  ye  stand,  by  which  also  ye  are  saved  ; 
I  make  known,  I  say,  in  what  words  I  preached  it 
to  you,  if  ye  hold  it  fast,  except  ye  believed  in  vain. 
For  I  delivered  unto  you  first  of  all  that  which  also  I 
received,  how  that  Christ  died  for  our  sins  according 
to  the  Scriptures  ;  and  that  he  was  buried  ;  and 
that  he  hath  been  raised  on  the  third  day  according 
to  the  Scriptures  ;  and  that  he  appeared  to  Cephas  ; 
then  to  the  twelve  ;  then  he  appeared  to  above  five 
hundred  brethren  at  once,  of  whom  the  greater  part 
remain  until  now,  but  some  are  fallen  asleep  ;  then 
he  appeared  to  J  ames  ;  then  to  all  the  apostles  ;  and 

1  1  Cor.  xv.  1-11. 


I  20 


MIRACLES 


last  of  all,  as  unto  one  born  out  of  due  time,  he  ap¬ 
peared  to  me  also.  For  I  am  the  least  of  the  apostles, 
that  am  not  meet  to  be  called  an  apostle,  because  I 
persecuted  the  church  of  God.  But  by  the  grace  of 
God  I  am  what  I  am  :  and  his  grace  which  was  be¬ 
stowed  upon  me  was  not  found  vain  ;  but  I  laboured 
more  abundantly  than  they  all :  yet  not  I,  but  the 
grace  of  God  which  was  with  me.  Whether  then  it 
be  I  or  they,  so  we  preach,  and  so  ye  believed. 

St.  Paul  was  writing  the  Epistle  to  the 
Corinthians  apparently  in  the  spring  of 
a.d.  55.  He  records  doubtless  what  he  had 
‘  delivered  ’  in  all  the  churches  he  had 
taught  since  he  began  his  missionary  life 
some  eight  years  before.  And  he  is  em¬ 
phatic  that  the  substance  of  this  proclama¬ 
tion  was  common  to  him  with  the  other 
apostles  :  ‘  Whether  then  it  be  I  or  they, 
so  we  preach,  and  so  ye  believed/  This 
record  is  nothing  less  than  the  title-deed 
of  the  church — the  title-deed  of  a  society 
which  based  all  its  authority  on  witness, 
the  record  of  chosen  witnesses  to  the  life 
and  death  and  resurrection  of  Jesus. 

Much  is  made  of  the  discrepancies  be¬ 
tween  the  various  narratives  of  our  Lord’s 
appearances.  I  do  not  think  that  they  are 
greater  than  the  discrepancies  that  will  be 


MIRACLES 


I  2  I 


found  in  the  narratives  of  eye-witnesses  of 
many  momentous  events  in  history.  The 
matter  must  be  examined  in  detail  else¬ 
where.1  But  the  strength  of  the  evidence 
is  much  greater  than  can  be  measured 
by  the  precise  trustworthiness  of  each 
particular  record.  There  is  no  question 
that  the  whole  apostolic  body  were  lifted 
out  of  despair  and  disheartenment  into 
an  absolute  confidence  of  faith,  within  the 
compass  of  a  short  period  of  days,  by  re¬ 
peated  visits,  as  they  were  assured,  of  their 
Lord  risen  from  the  dead.  If  we  may  so 
express  it,  their  lives  were  driven  round  a 
sharp  corner,  or  set  on  a  new  basis. 

They  were  men  different  in  character, 
but  the  impression  made  upon  them  was 
the  same.  They  were,  as  appears  in  the 
Gospel  narrative,  all  of  them  plain,  un¬ 
imaginative  men,  as  unlike  ‘  visionaries  ’ 
as  possible  :  the  impression  was  made  on 
them  in  spite  of  their  being  ‘  slow  of  faith.’ 
It  was  the  kind  of  impression,  therefore, 
which  only  solid  objective  events  can  make 
upon  the  senses  and  the  mind. 

1  Dr.  Sanday’s  treatment  ( Outlines  of  the  Life  of  Christ 
(Clark,  1905),  pp.  170  ff.)  will  be  found,  as  usual, 
singularly  candid. 


122 


MIRACLES 


This  place  of  the  resurrection  in  God’s 
revelation  of  His  purpose  and  mind  is 
evident  enough.  It  was  the  reversal  of  the 
impression  made  by  the  Christ  being  left 
to  die.  It  made  evident  that  the  divine 
power,  the  power  which  creates  and  sustains 
the  world,  was  on  the  side  of  Christ. 

I  want  to  emphasize  this  point.  Nature 
is,  in  its  normal  order,  non-moral  in  appear¬ 
ance.  God  maketh  the  sun  to  rise  on  the 
evil  and  on  the  good,  and,  as  certainly, 
overwhelms  in  physical  catastrophes  evil 
and  good  indiscriminately.  At  times  no¬ 
thing  lays  so  great  a  strain  on  faith  as 
the  totally  mechanical  or  non-moral  aspect 
of  nature.  If  nature  can  be  so  cruel,  we 
cry,  can  the  God  of  nature  care  ?  But  at 
the  great  central  moment  in  the  world’s 
moral  history,  in  the  case  of  Christ,  we  are 
allowed  to  see  that  the  God  of  nature  and 
the  God  of  conscience  are  one.  The  real 
meaning  of  the  incarnation,  of  the  Word 
made  flesh,  requires,  as  we  may  say,  that 
in  the  case  of  Christ  it  should  thus  have  been 
made  evident  that  there  is  only  one  lord- 
ship  in  heaven  and  earth.  And  the  faith 
of  all  subsequent  generations  has  rested 
on  that  evidence,  and  been  made  strong. 


MIRACLES 


123 


In  Christ  we  see  in  summary  the  purpose 
of  God  for  mankind.  In  His  resurrection 
we  see  in  summary  that  at  the  last  the 
material,  as  well  as  the  spiritual  order,  is 
to  take  its  place  in  the  kingdom  of  God, 
in  the  new  heaven  and  the  new  earth  wherein 
dwelleth  righteousness. 

The  account  of  the  physical  state  of  the 
risen  Christ,  given  in  the  Gospel  records, 
taken  together,  is  so  remarkable  and  so 
completely  without  precedent  in  Jewish 
literature,  that  it  is  in  itself  a  great  witness 
to  its  truth.  Our  Lord,  in  rising,  is  pro¬ 
bably  represented  as  having  passed  out  of 
the  grave-clothes,  leaving  them  to  collapse.1 
He  is  certainly  represented  as  having  passed 
out  of  the  tomb  before  the  stone  was  rolled 
away  to  show  that  He  was  gone.  He  passed 
into  the  apostolic  assembly  through  the 
closed  doors.  He  appears  and  disappears, 
and  in  ‘  a  different  form.’  He  is  not  repre¬ 
sented  as  living  in  any  one  place,  or  as 
passing  by  the  modes  of  motion  which  He 
had  used,  like  other  men,  in  His  mortal 
body,  from  place  to  place.  He  is  in  a 
higher  state  of  being.  His  body  has  been 

1  John  xx.  6,  7.  See  Latham’s  The  Risen  Master , 
(Camb.  1904),  pp.  26,  43-44,  and  note. 


124 


MIRACLES 


so  transmuted  as  to  be  no  longer  subject 
to  the  laws  which  restrain  the  grosser 
mortal  body.  He  can  manifest  Himself 
under  those  old,  lower  conditions,  so  as  to 
eat  with  His  disciples.  But  He  is  no  longer 
subj  ect  to  them.  The  body  is  now  spiritual : 
that  is  to  say,  it  is  the  simple  instrument  of 
spiritual  purpose.  It  has  lost  all  its  gross 
and  hampering  limitations.  The  idea  of 
the  spiritual  body,  as  St.  Paul  conceives  of 
it,  in  forecasting  the  destiny  of  all  the  re¬ 
deemed,  corresponds  much  more  than  is 
generally  supposed  with  the  facts  as  re¬ 
corded  of  our  Lord’s  risen  body  in  the 
Gospels.  All  the  acts  of  the  risen  Christ 
are  thus  symbolic.  They  are  done  from 
no  natural  necessity,  as  eating  or  sleeping 
or  moving  was  a  necessity  of  His  former 
mortal  state :  they  are  simply  exhibitions 
in  outward  form  of  spiritual  purpose. 
Thus,  when  He  rose  before  His  disciples’ 
eyes  and  passed  upwards  in  His  ascension, 
the  act  was  symbolic.  He  was  not  obliged 
to  go  that  way  to  a  heaven  above  the  clouds, 
any  more  than  He  was  obliged  to  pass  by 
a  particular  road  from  Galilee  to  Jerusalem. 
He  is  above  all  such  limitations.  Doubt¬ 
less  the  apostles  thought  heaven  was  above 


MIRACLES 


125 


their  heads.  And  still,  though  we  no  longer 
think  so,  we  cannot  help  expressing  our 
ideas  of  what  is  heavenly  by  the  physical 
metaphor  of  ‘  above.'  And,  whatever 
our  astronomy,  the  record  of  our  Lord’s 
rising  before  the  apostles’  eyes  upwards, 
expresses  the  spiritual  truth  of  His  ‘  exalta¬ 
tion  to  the  right  hand  of  power  ’  as  no 
other  motion  could  have  done.  The  ascen¬ 
sion,  as  an  event  in  time,  was  the  last  of 
the  appearances  of  Jesus,  the  same  in  char¬ 
acter  with  those  that  had  gone  before.  It 
comes  to  us  only  on  the  authority  of  St. 
Luke  ;  but  such  an  event,  witnessed  by  the 
apostles,  is  required  to  explain  the  unani¬ 
mity  with  which  the  first  church  believed 
that  Christ  was  ‘  received  up,’  and  ‘  was 
seated  at  the  right  hand  of  God.’ 

The  miracle  of  our  Lord’s  virgin  birth 
rests  on  a  different  basis  of  evidence  from 
the  rest  of  the  record.  It  was  not  part  of 
the  original  apostolic  testimony  ;  for  the 
church  laid  the  greatest  stress  on  testimony, 
and  the  period  of  which  the  apostles  were 
witnesses  extended  only  from  the  preaching 
of  John  the  Baptist  till  the  time  when 
Jesus  was  taken  up  from  them.1  This 

1  Acts  i.  22. 


I  2  6 


MIRACLES 


explains  the  limits  of  St.  Mark’s  and  St. 
John’s  Gospels,  which  comprise  simply  the 
apostolic  witness. 

Thus  the  virgin  birth  was  not  part  of  the 
grounds  on  which  belief  in  Jesus  was  asked 
for.  It  was  on  the  grounds  of  what  Jesus 
had  said  and  done  and  suffered,  on  the 
grounds  of  what  God  had  done  when  He 
raised  Him  from  the  dead,  that  belief  was 
asked  for  in  His  divine  sonship. 

But  when  men  had  first  believed,  and 
come  into  the  believing  circle,  they  could 
not  but  have  inquired  into  the  circum¬ 
stances  of  Jesus’  birth.  Originally  there 
were  but  two  chief  witnesses  of  these  cir¬ 
cumstances,  Joseph  and  Mary;  and  Mary 
was  still  alive  in  the  first  circle  of  believers. 
When  we  look  at  the  two  narratives  we 
have  got  of  our  Lord’s  birth,  they  present 
all  the  appearance  of  coming  respectively 
from  Joseph  and  Mary.  They  are  inde¬ 
pendent,  and  certainly  both  of  them  purely 
Jewish  in  origin.1 

In  St.  Matthew  we  have  an  account  of 
our  Lord’s  birth  wholly  from  the  side  of 
Joseph — his  perplexities,  his  difficulties, 
his  reassurance,  his  protection  of  the  mother 

1  See  Harnack,  Luke  the  Physician,  pp.  166-7. 


MIRACLES 


127 


and  the  child.  I  believe  the  account  in 
St.  Matthew  to  be  based  ultimately  on  the 
witness  of  Joseph,  very  possibly  left  in 
writing 1  with  his  family  to  protect  the 
character  of  the  mother.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  the  record  in  St.  Luke,  we  have  a 
narrative  which,  if  it  is  at  all  trustworthy, 
must  come  from  Mary,  and  no  one  else — 
Mary,  who  ‘  kept  all  these  things,  ponder¬ 
ing  them  in  her  heart.’ 2  As  evidence  of 
its  trustworthiness,  besides  its  own  con¬ 
vincing  character,  we  may  point  (1)  to  the 
fact  that  it  breathes  the  spirit  of  the  Mes¬ 
sianic  hope,  before  it  had  received  the  rude 
and  crushing  blow  involved  in  the  rejection 
of  the  Messiah  by  His  own  people.  The 
Child  is  to  ‘  reign  over  the  house  of  Jacob 
for  ever.’  ‘  God  hath  raised  up  a  horn  of 
salvation  for  us  in  the  house  of  his  servant 
David ;  .  .  .  salvation  from  our  enemies,  and 
from  the  hand  of  all  that  hate  us.’  It  is  the 
hope  of  ‘  the  redemption  of  Jerusalem’ 
that  is  to  be  satisfied.3  Such  expressions 


1  Zechariah  could  write  (Luke  i.  63),  and  therefore 
presumably  Joseph. 

2  Luke  ii.  19. 

3  Luke  i.  33,  69,  7 1,  ii.  38  :  cf.  Gwatkin,  Knowledge  of 

God  (Clark,  1907)  ii.  p.  25.  ‘  These  intensely  Jewish 


128 


MIRACLES 


could  hardly  have  originated  when  the  real 
event  had  been  made  plain. 

(2)  To  the  fact  that  the  narrative  is  given 
us  by  the  careful  and  intelligent  recorder 
St.  Luke,  who  grounds  his  claim  to  write 
on  his  having  ‘  traced  the  course  of  all 
things  accurately  from  the  first.' 

There  is  good  evidence,  then,  for  the  fact 
that  our  Lord  was  born  of  a  human  mother 
only,  without  a  human  father.  The  church 
fastened  upon  this  event,  and  from  the 
beginning  of  the  second  century  it  is  en¬ 
shrined  in  the  early  confessions  of  faith,  as 
something  integral  to  the  Christian  re¬ 
ligion.  I  believe  this  instinct  was  sound. 
It  seems  to  me  that  the  moral  miracle  of 
Christ’s  sinlessness  is  apt  not  to  be  duly 
estimated.  It  did  constitute  Him,  not  less 
properly  human,  but  distinct  from  other 
men  by  a  distinction  which  goes  down  to 
the  depths  of  our  nature.  His  sinlessness 
agrees  with  the  estimate  which  St.  Paul 
forms  of  Him  as  a  new  creation — the  ‘  last 
Adam  ’ —  a  fresh  start  for  humanity.  I 
think  such  a  fresh  start  for  humanity  is 

hymns  must  have  been  written  by  Jews,  and  at  a  time 
b'efore  Israel  had  finally  rejected  Christ — say  before  a.d. 
62.’ 


MIRACLES 


I  29 

naturally  associated  with  some  physical 
miracle.  It  is  in  itself  strictly  an  inter¬ 
ruption  of  the  natural  order  or  sequence. 
The  character  of  Christ’s  manhood  involves 
such  an  interruption.  He  was  not  a  natural 
product  of  the  existing  order.  It  is  natural, 
therefore,  to  believe  that  the  divine  action 
which  gave  Him  birth  would  be,  in  the 
physical  world  also,  exceptional.  It  is 
natural  to  believe,  further,  that  the  birth  of 
the  eternal  Son  in  manhood  should  differ 
in  circumstances  and  conditions  from  the 
production  of  a  new  human  personality. 
In  fact,  the  agreement  of  the  church’s 
belief  about  Christ’s  person  with  the  accept¬ 
ance  of  the  miracle  of  His  birth  is  so 
intimate  that  in  history  the  two  have  been 
inseparable.  There  have  been  no  believers 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  creeds  who  have 
not  been  believers  in  the  virgin  birth, 
and  in  recent  years  it  has  become  in¬ 
creasingly  evident  that  those  who  disbelieve 
in  the  virgin  birth  are  in  other  respects 
also  adherents  of  the  New  Theology  :  they 
mostly  doubt  the  bodily  resurrection  ;  and 
give  to  the  incarnation  a  different  sense 
from  that  in  which  the  Creed  proclaims  it. 
I  think  the  tendencies  of  the  present 

9 


130 


MIRACLES 


moment  strongly  confirm  the  position  that 
the  acceptance  of  Christ’s  virgin  birth  is 
in  vital  connexion  with  the  whole  of  Chris¬ 
tian  belief. 


LECTURE  VII 


THE  ATONEMENT  AND  THE  INSPIRATION  OF 

SCRIPTURE 

On  the  conceptions  of  God,  of  sin,  and  of 
Christ,  and  on  the  credibility  of  miracles, 
we  have  been  able  to  present  to  ourselves 
a  more  or  less  marked  contrast  between  the 
New  Theology  and  the  fundamental  ideas 
of  the  old  religion.  There  are  other  doc¬ 
trines  of  Christianity — notably  the  doctrines 
of  the  Atonement  and  the  inspiration  of 
Scripture — about  which  the  New  Theology 
has  a  good  deal  to  say,  but  on  which  the 
contrast  between  the  new  and  the  old  need 
not,  and  indeed  cannot,  be  brought  to  a 
like  issue,  because  the  Christian  society 
has  never  given  these  doctrines  a  definite 
form  in  any  authoritative  creed,  and  we 
have  therefore  got  no  definite  standard  of 
belief  to  refer  to.  I  shall  have  occasion 
later  again  to  draw  attention  to  this.  It 
will  appear  plainly  that  it  was  a  true 


132  THE  ATONEMENT  AND  THE 

instinct  which  caused  the  catholic  church 
to  define  its  faith  in  terms  of  the  doctrine 
of  God  and  the  person  of  Christ,  and  to 
leave  the  belief  in  Christ’s  atonement  and 
the  inspiration  of  Scripture  undefined. 

On  the  subject  of  the  atonement,  Sir 
Oliver  Lodge  is  inadequate,  yet  reverent 
and  appreciative.1  Mr.  Campbell  begins, 
indeed,  by  giving  a  crude  parody  of  the 
‘  accepted  belief  ’  on  the  subject,2  but 
afterwards  goes  as  far  in  recognition  of 
Christ’s  vicarious  sacrifice  as  any  one  can 
go,  who  believes  that  in  our  various  degrees 
we  are  all  fundamentally  Christs.  The 
fact  is  that  no  theology  which  is  based  on 
the  principle  that  Godhead  and  manhood 
are  at  bottom  identical,  and  that  what 
Christ  was  all  other  men  are,  can  really 
come  near  to  the  New  Testament  idea  of 
atonement. 

What  I  propose  to  do  here  is — without 
defining  what  has  been  left  undefined,  or 
even  seeking  to  determine  anything  that  is 
obscure — to  state  the  New  Testament  idea 
of  atonement  in  its  main  principle,  so  as 
to  guard  it  from  abuse,  and  to  show  that 

1  The  Substance  of  Faith,  pp.  9S-100. 

2  The  New  Theology,  pp.  1 14-15. 


INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE  133 

it  follows  inevitably  from  the  fundamental 
doctrines  which  we  have  already  considered, 
of  God  and  sin  and  Christ. 

As  regards  the  inspiration  of  Scripture, 
it  is  again  plain  that  a  teaching  which 
diverges  so  far  from  the  fundamental 
teaching  of  the  Bible  about  God  and  man 
and  Christ  as  the  New  Theology  does,  can 
hold  only  a  very  attenuated  doctrine  of  its 
inspiration.1  On  this  subject  again  I  pro¬ 
pose  to  content  myself  with  showing  that 
there  is  a  doctrine  of  inspiration,  which  has 
the  fullest  spiritual  and  practical  value,  and 
satisfies  the  whole  requirement  of  the  church, 
which  any  one  who  accepts  the  Creed 
can  hardly  hesitate  to  make  his  own. 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  ATONEMENT 

Christians,  from  the  very  first,  saw  in 
Christ’s  death  not  only  a  crime  on  the  part 
of  His  murderers,  but  also  on  His  part  a 
voluntary  sacrifice,  and  a  sacrifice  by  which 
their  redemption  had  been  won.  The 
Gospels  represent  Him  at  the  last  supper 
proclaiming  the  sacrificial  nature  of  the 

1  The  New  Theology ,  pp.  176  ff.  The  Substance  of 
Faith ,  p.  93,  is  much  more  reverent. 


134  THE  atonement  and  the 

death  which  He  was  to  undergo.  His  body 
was  being  given,  and  His  blood  poured  out, 
for  men  and  for  the  remission  of  sins.1  One 
of  the  earliest  speeches  in  the  Acts  represents 
the  church  as  seeing  in  Christ’s  death  and 
resurrection  the  fulfilment  of  the  great 
prophecy  of  the  Servant  of  Jehovah  who 
was  to  save  his  people  by  his  vicarious 
sufferings  and  death.2  The  heart  of  Chris¬ 
tendom  has  gone  out  in  welcome  to  this 
teaching  as  to  hardly  anything  else.  The 
*  showing  of  the  Lord’s  death/  as  the 
sacrifice  of  our  redemption,  has  been  from 
the  first  the  chief  service  of  catholic  Chris¬ 
tendom,  and  the  crucifix  generally  its  most 
popular  symbol ;  and  the  proclamation  of 
the  glory  of  the  atonement — in  hymns  such 
as  ‘  Rock  of  Ages  ’ — has  been  the  central 
theme  of  ‘  evangelical  ’  worship.  But 
while  the  heart  has  welcomed  the  doctrine, 
the  intellect  has  been  baffled  more  con¬ 
spicuously  here  than  at  other  points  in  the 
faith  and  worship  of  Christendom.  There 
have  been  deeply  different  theories — as 
Origen’s  and  Anselm’s,  and  Abelard’s  and 

1  Mark  xiv.  24,  Matt.  xxvi.  28,  Luke  xxii.  19,  20, 
I  Cor.  xi.  24-6. 

2  Acts  iii.  13,  261,  cf.  Is-  lii.-iii, 


INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE  1 3  5 


Calvin’s— which  we  have  all  come  to  recog¬ 
nize  as  in  various  ways  inadequate.  And 
the  church  has  never  corporately  faced  the 
question  raised,  or  embodied  its  faith  in  any 
formula,  while  all  the  time  the  doctrine  is 
liable  very  easily  to  be  so  isolated,  and  dis¬ 
torted  in  popular  belief,  as  to  become  a 
dangerous  and  misleading  error. 

It  is  true  to  say  that,  as  formalism  has 
been  the  besetting  sin  of  catholic  Christen¬ 
dom,  so  the  misuse  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
atonement  has  been  for  Protestant  Chris¬ 
tianity  ;  and  in  both  cases  with  the  same 
result  :  that  of  weakening  the  effect  of  the 
central  lesson  of  the  religion  of  the  Bible — - 
that  salvation  means  deliverance  from  the 
actual  power  of  sin  into  a  state  of  actual 
righteousness,  and  that  fellowship  with 
God  is  in  no  other  way  possible  than  by 
becoming  actually  like  God  in  moral  char¬ 
acter.  This  moralizing  of  religion  is  the 
chief  object,  we  may  say,  of  the  religion  of 
the  Bible,  both  in  the  Old  and  in  the  New 
Testament.  The  early  church,  under  the 
first  inspiration  of  the  Spirit,  was  pre¬ 
eminently  a  body  characterized  by  its  lofty 
and  unworldly  ethical  tone.  It  was  the 
moral  ‘  salt  of  the  earth,’  The  peril  under 


136  THE  ATONEMENT  AND  THE 

Catholicism  has  been  for  the  church,  as  it 
became  popular,  to  be  satisfied  with  outward 
conformity,  and  lose  the  strenuousness  of 
its  moral  appeal.  The  peril  under  Pro¬ 
testantism  has  been  for  people  to  dwell 
complacently  upon  ‘  the  danger  of  thinking 
to  be  saved  by  works,’  and  to  take  Christ’s 
‘  finished  work  ’  as  a  substitute  for  their 
own  effort.  And  the  idea  of  vicarious  pun¬ 
ishment — Christ  punished  that  we  might 
be  *  let  off  ’ — has,  more  than  anything  else, 
tended  to  alienate  the  best  moral  conscience 
of  mankind  from  Christian  teaching. 

Let  us  try,  then,  to  grasp  at  least  the 
main  principle  of  the  atonement  doctrine, 
and,  if  we  can,  to  make  sure  its  safeguards. 

In  Christ  we  saw — not  the  highest 
achievement  of  human  nature,  but  the 
recreative  act  of  God.  It  was  the  eternal 
Son  of  God  who  '  for  us  men,  and  for  our 
salvation,  came  down  from  heaven,  and 
was  incarnate  and  was  made  man.’  That 
is  the  starting-point  of  the  Christian  view 
of  Christ’s  work.  ‘  God,  in  the  person  of 
Christ,  was  reconciling  the  world  unto 
himself,’  and  undoing  the  evil  of  man’s 
rebellion.  Certainly,  as  will  appear,  He 
will  not  redeem  us  without  our  co-operation. 


INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE  137 

Every  faculty  of  our  human  nature  will  be 
summoned  to  correspondence.  It  is  within 
us,  and  not  apart  from  us,  that  our  redemp¬ 
tion  is  to  be  wrought.  But,  first  of  all, 
the  great  act  is  accomplished  for  us  and 
independently  of  us.  ‘  He  trod  the  wine¬ 
press  alone,  and  of  the  people  there  was  none 
with  him/  Alone  He  set  the  perfect 
example  of  the  sinless  and  flawless  manhood. 
Over  against  all  our  wilfulness  and  weak¬ 
ness  and  selfishness  and  pride,  He  offered 
before  the  Father  a  perfect  obedience.  And 
when  human  sin  laid  upon  Him  the  penalty 
of  failure  and  suffering  and  ignominy  and 
death,  He  did  not  refuse  to  ‘  learn  obedience 
from  the  things  that  he  suffered/  He  was 
obedient  ‘  unto  death/  He  sealed  His 
self-sacrifice  in  the  shedding  of  His  blood. 
And  this  human  sacrifice  of  obedience 
perfected  in  death  the  Father  accepted, 
and  ratified  His  acceptance  by  raising  Christ 
from  the  dead  and  exalting  Him  to  the 
heavenly  glory.  ‘  This  is  my  beloved  Son, 
in  whom  I  am  well  pleased/ 

Then  out  of  that  manhood,  accepted  and 
glorified,  proceeds  forth  the  Holy  Spirit, 
who  is  to  gather  all  the  sons  of  faith,  all 
who  will  accept  Christ  for  their  master  and 


138  THE  ATONEMENT  AND  THE 

their  saviour,  into  such  intimate  union 
with  Him,  that  they  are  to  share  His 
character  and  His  suffering  and  His  glory. 
This  is  ‘  Christ  in  us.’  ‘  He  shall  see  his  seed 
.  .  .  and  be  satisfied.’  It  is  the  fruit  of  His 
sacrifice.  But  up  to  this  point  it  is  all  God’s 
act  for  us,  God’s  redemption  of  his  people, 
in  Christ.  To  it  we  contributed  nothing. 
We  can  but  welcome  and  receive  in  faith 
God’s  gift  of  our  redemption  in  Christ.  We 
can  but  join  the  great  company  of  the  re¬ 
deemed  who  cry,  ‘  Worthy  art  thou  .  .  .  for 
thou  wast  slain,  and  didst  purchase  unto 
God  with  thy  blood  men  of  every  tribe  and 
tongue  and  people  and  nation,  and  madest 
them  to  be  unto  our  God  a  kingdom  and 
priests  ;  and  they  reign  upon  the  earth.’ 1 
‘  In  none  other  is  there  salvation  :  for 
neither  is  there  any  other  name  under 
heaven,  that  is  given  among  men,  wherein 
we  must  be  saved.’ 2 

This  is  the  real  point  of  the  church  doc¬ 
trine  of  the  atonement.  It  is  the  recogni¬ 
tion  that  our  redemption  is  based  upon 
something  done  simply  and  altogether  for 
us  by  the  self-sacrifice  of  Christ.  It  was 
His  obedience,  unto  the  shedding  of  His 

1  Rev.  v.  9,  10.  2  Acts  iv.  12. 


INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE  1 39 

blood,  that  won  for  man  his  new  standing- 
ground  in  the  face  of  God  his  Father, 
and  his  new  power  to  put  all  evil  under 
his  feet.  What  our  sins  had  lost,  Christ’s 
self-sacrifice  has  regained  for  us. 

It  is  quite  plain  that  in  adhering  to  this 
teaching  we  are  in  no  peril  of  attributing 
injustice  to  God.  For  it  is  God  who,  in 
Christ,  is  reconciling  the  world  to  Himself. 
It  is  divine  self-sacrifice  which  is  there  at 
work — one  will  of  love  in  Father  and  Son. 

Moreover,  there  is  strictly  no  justification 
for  speaking  of  the  Father  as  punishing 
the  Son  in  our  place.  We  have  indeed  here 
the  supreme  example  of  what  is  the  noblest 
element  in  human  history — vicarious  sacri¬ 
fice  ;  but  there  is  no  evidence  of  vicarious 
punishment.  The  Father  ‘  spares  not  ’  His 
Son,  but  suffers  Him  to  bear,  without  miracu¬ 
lous  exemption,  all  that  human  sin  laid 
upon  Him,  all  the  failure  and  the  desertion 
and  the  death.  But  there  is  no  part  of  all 
that  Christ  bore  that  was  not,  in  the  natural 
order  of  the  world  that  He  came  into, 
involved  in  His  obedience.  There  is,  so 
far  as  we  can  see,  no  other  ‘  punishment  * 
laid  on  Him  by  the  Father  than  that  bear¬ 
ing  of  the  consequences  of  other  men’s  sins. 


140  THE  ATONEMENT  AND  THE 

which  fell  upon  Him  inevitably  when  He 
came  as  man  into  a  sinful  world,  and  which 
falls  upon  every  man  or  woman,  in  measure, 
who  enters  into  the  lot  of  humanity.  Nor 
does  His  suffering,  His  bearing  the  sin  of 
the  world,  exempt  other  men  from  what 
can  be  more  properly  called  punishment, 
the  punishment  of  their  own  sins.  His 
blood-shedding  is  indeed  said  to  have  been 
propitiatory,  and  to  have  enabled  the 
Father  to  forgive  us.  A  word  shall  be  said 
about  that  expression  directly.  It  warrants 
us  in  saying  that  Christ  suffered  in  order 
that  we  might  be  forgiven ;  but  we  are  not 
warranted  in  saying  that  Christ  suffered  in 
order  that  we  might  be  exempted  from 
suffering. 

The  penalty  of  sin,  as  it  is  presented  to 
us  in  Scripture,  may  be  said  to  be  twofold; 
It  is  in  part  the  alienation  from  God  which 
lies  in  the  sin  itself,  and  is  indistinguishable 
from  the  state  of  sin  :  and  that  Christ  did 
not  bear.  In  the  case  of  each  one  of  us  it 
ceases  to  exist  as  soon  as  ever  the  soul  passes 
from  rebellion  into  surrender. 

But  besides  this,  which  is  purely  personal, 
there  is  the  penalty  which  lies  in  the  con¬ 
sequences  of  sins,  whether  our  own  sins  or 


INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE  1 4  I 

the  sins  of  others  :  the  consequences  in  the 
way  of  chastisement.  And  from  these 
Christ  does  not  save  us.  They  are  turned 
into  our  healing  penance.  ‘  Whom  the 
Lord  loveth  He  chasteneth.’  The  record 
of  God’s  dealings  with  His  saints  is  that 
they  are  ‘  heard/  ‘  forgiven/  and  ‘  pun¬ 
ished.’  1  The  idea  that  we  are  f  let  off  ’ 
punishment  because  Christ  suffered  for  us, 
is,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  entirely  a  figment, 
except  in  the  sense  that  Christ,  by  His  self- 
sacrifice,  is  the  means  of  our  redemption 
from  that  alienation  from  God  which  is  the 
essence  of  sin  and  of  hell.2 

We  get  back  thus  to  that  question  which 
the  human  mind  seems  to  have  found 
especially  perplexing — the  question  why 
Christ’s  sacrifice  should  have  been,  as 
St.  Paul  and  St.  John  seem  to  say  it  was,  a 
necessary  condition  of  the  Gospel  of  for¬ 
giveness.  There  is  only  one  passage  in  the 
New  Testament  where  this  question  seems 
to  occur,3  and  there  St.  Paul  seems  to 
give  an  answer  which  can  satisfy  our  con- 

1  Ps.  xcix.  8. 

2  I  have  argued  this  matter  more  at  length  in  Romans , 

ii.  215  f. 

3  Rom.  iii.  25.  See  the  commentary  of  Sanday  and 
Headlam  (Methuen),  or  my  exposition  in  loco. 


142  THE  ATONEMENT  AND  THE 

science  and  mind  on  the  subject.  There 
he  seems  to  say  that  it  was  necessary  in 
view  of  the  moral  government  of  the  world  : 
because,  after  man’s  age-long  lawlessness 
and  God’s  age-long  forbearance,  a  mere 
declaration  of  forgiveness,  without  an  act  of 
reparation  on  man’s  part  would  have  led  to 
a  mistaking  of  the  character  of  God.  As  it 
is,  the  gift  of  divine  forgivenesss  in  Christ  is 
bought  at  so  costly  a  price,  so  splendid  an 
act  of  reparation  on  the  part  of  Christ,  the 
representative  head  of  the  new  humanity, 
that  we  cannot  misunderstand  the  divine 
love  in  forgiving,  as  if  it  carried  with  it  any 
abandonment  of  moral  requirement. 

My  last  point  is  this  :  there  is  no  shadow 
of  a  doctrine  of  imputed  righteousness  in 
the  New  Testament,  such  as  will  suffer  us 
to  imagine  that  there  can  be  any  final  recon¬ 
ciliation  of  an  individual  man  with  God,  on 
any  other  basis  than  likeness  of  character. 
It  is  through  and  through  the  teaching 
of  the  Bible  that  it  is  only  ultimately  the 
godlike  who  can  see  God.  All  the  work 
of  Christ  in  setting  us  the  perfect  example, 
and  in  providing  for  us  the  opportunity  of 
a  fresh  start,  by  the  forgiveness  of  our 
sins,  is  only  the  prelude  to  that  which  is 


INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE  T  43 

in  the  deepest  sense  the  work  of  Christ  in 
us,  the  renewing  by  His  spirit  of  heart  and 
life  and  character  into  the  divine  image. 

Here,  then,  we  get  the  root  principle  of 
the  atonement  made  for  us  in  Christ. 
Christ,  the  incarnate  Son  of  God,  is  the 
representative  man.  In  Him  our  manhood 
is  reconstituted,  and  plays  its  perfect  part, 
and  offers  its  perfect  sacrifice,  and  wins  its 
perfect  acceptance.  Finally,  each  man  is 
accepted  in  the  Beloved,  only  because  he 
has  come  to  share  His  character  through 
the  permeating  influence  of  His  Spirit. 
But  long  before  this  there  is  an  initial  and 
provisional  acceptance.  It  is  the  great 
principle  of  God’s  dealings  with  us,  that  He 
deals  with  us,  not  as  we  are,  but  as  we  are 
becoming.  At  the  first  moment  when  the 
man  turns,  or  as  often  as  after  repeated 
falls  he  turns,  from  his  rebellion  to  obedi¬ 
ence,  and  welcomes  the  offer  of  God,  he  is 
accepted  and  forgiven,  and  given  his  stand¬ 
ing-ground  in  the  Father’s  house,  long 
before  he  is,  in  his  own  character,  fit  for  it, 
because  he  has  taken  Christ  for  his  master, 
and  is  seen  already  in  the  character  of  his 
elder  brother.1 


1  That  the  first  movement  must  be  a  movement  of 


144  THE  atonement  and  the 

My  object  in  this  discourse  is  attained  if 
I  have  made  it  plain  that  the  Christian  idea 
of  atonement  is  bound  up  with  the  idea  of 
Christ’s  redemptive  work  as,  first  of  all,  a 
work  done  for  us,  without  any  co-operation 
on  our  part ;  but  that,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  safeguarding  of  this  doctrine  from 
moral  abuse  lies  in  the  recognition  that  the 
work  of  Christ  for  us  is  only  the  prelude 
to  His  work  in  us  :  that  it  is  Christ  in  us,  the 
immanent  Christ,  which  is  ‘  the  hope  of 
glory.’  And  it  will  be  apparent  what  a 
safeguard  for  the  holding  together  of  these 
two  complementary  half-truths — the  Christ 
for  us  and  the  Christ  in  us — is  afforded  by 
the  sacramental  system.  The  sacraments  as 
a  whole  are  the  symbols  and  instruments  of 
the  immanent  Christ.  The  sacrament  of 
the  Breaking  of  the  Bread  in  particular  is 

obedience  as  well  as  acceptance  is  seen  in  the  fact  that 
forgiveness  is  first  of  all  associated  with  baptism,  Acts  ii. 
38  :  cf.  ‘I  believe  in  one  baptism  for  the  remission  of  sins  * 
— baptism  involving  the  acceptance  of  the  obedience  of 
Christ.  And  the  same  principle  appears  in  each  subse¬ 
quent  absolution. 

The  provisional  character  of  all  such  initial  accept¬ 
ances  is  seen  most  clearly  in  the  Parable  of  the  Unmerci¬ 
ful  Servant,  where  the  subsequent  exhibition  of  a  temper 
incompatible  with  being  forgiven,  at  once  obliterates  the 
absolution  already  given. 


INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE  1 45 

the  continual  representation  of  the  atoning 
sacrifice,  one,  full,  perfect  and  sufficient — 
but  in  the  most  intimate  and  inseparable 
connexion  with  the  communication  to  us 
of  the  once-sacrificed  life,  the  body  and 
blood  of  the  living  Christ,  to  be  our  spiritual 
food. 


THE  INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE 

The  inspiration  of  Scripture,  logically 
considered,  is  not  the  ground  on  which  be¬ 
lief  in  Christ  is  to  be  asked  for.  The 
proclamation  of  Christ  was  first  made  by 
witnesses,  and  it  was  as  witnesses  that 
were  to  be  believed.  St.  Luke,  in  the 
preface  to  his  Gospel,  makes  no  other  claim 
than  that  of  producing  a  careful  record  of 
the  testimony  of  eye-witnesses  of  the  Lord 
Jesus.  So  far  as  historical  events  are  con¬ 
cerned,  we  must  be  content  in  our  age  to 
appeal  to  authentic  history.  No  doubt 
historical  testimony  is  not  all  that  goes  to 
make  belief.  There  must  be  the  spiritual 
disposition  which  makes  acceptance  pos¬ 
sible.  But  the  historical  claim  must  be 
supported  by  good  historical  testimony. 
The  Gospel  records  must  make  good  their 

10 


I46  THE  ATONEMENT  AND  THE 

claim  to  be  such  testimony.  I  believe,  with 
the  profoundest  conviction,  that  they  can 
do  so.  And  that  it  is  those  who  doubt  or 
deny,  and  not  those  who  accept  the  witness 
of  the  Gospel  narratives,  who  do  violence  to 
the  evidence. 

When  a  man  has  once  believed  that  Jesus 
is  the  Lord,  the  Christ  of  God,  he  will  find 
himself  believing  in  the  inspiration  of  the 
Old  Testament :  that  is  to  say,  he  will  find 
in  the  Old  Testament  the  record  of  a  pre¬ 
paration  for  Christ.  He  will  find  in  the 
Jews  a  chosen  people,  ‘  the  sacred  school  of 
the  knowledge  of  God  and  of  the  spiritual 
life’  which  was  destined  thence  to  spread 
to  all  mankind. 

In  other  words,  he  will  believe  that  the 
prophets  of  the  Old  Testament  made  a 
true  claim  when  they  claimed  to  speak  ‘  the 
word  of  the  Lord.’  That  word  or  message 
was  communicated  gradually,  ‘  in  many 
parts  and  in  many  manners.’  1  In  many 
parts  ;  and  thus  the  believer  in  Christ  will 
have  no  difficulty  in  accepting  the  fact  that 
the  Old  Testament  gives  us  the  record  of  a 
gradual  process  of  divine  education  ;  and 
that  a  very  imperfect  moral  level  was  ac- 

1  Heb.  i.  1. 


INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE  1 47 

cepted  by  God  as  a  stage  towards  better 
things.  The  ancient  fathers  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  church  had  no  hesitation  in  recog¬ 
nizing  that  what  we  are  to  look  for  in  the 
Old  Testament  morality  is  not  perfection, 
especially  in  its  earlier  stages,  but  only  a 
right  direction. 

And  the  message  of  God  was  given  ‘  in 
many  manners/  The  Christian  believer 
need  not  hesitate  to  recognize  in  the  early 
chapters  of  Genesis  narratives  which  are 
not  historical,  but  give  us  *  doctrines  in  the 
form  of  a  story.’  He  will  not  be  shocked 
to  find  in  the  Old  Testament  popular  legend, 
and  poetical  history,  and  stories  narrated 
for  a  moral  purpose,  as  well  as  history  more 
strictly  so  called.  For  all  these  can  be 
vehicles  of  the  spiritual  instruction  of  a 
nation.  He  will  read  the  Hebrew  docu¬ 
ments  like  the  documents  of  any  other  his¬ 
tory,  but  he  will  find  in  them  something 
which  he  does  not  find  in  any  other  history, 
to  nearly  the  same  extent— a  continuous 
guidance  in  which  he  will  recognize  the  in¬ 
spiring  influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  training 
and  guiding  a  race  to  right  thoughts  about 
God  and  man,  to  a  right  sense  of  sin,  and  a 
right  expectation  of  redemption.  He  will 


I48  THE  ATONEMENT  AND  THE 

find  in  every  one  of  the  books  of  the  Old 
Testament  some  element  or  aspect  of  this 
gradual  revelation. 

Thus,  while  he  makes  no  claim  for  the 
Old  Testament  writers  to  be  teachers  of 
science,  or  to  be  infallible  in  matters  of 
history,  he  will  see  in  them,  in  their  different 
degrees  and  according  to  their  different 
literary  methods  and  human  idiosyncrasies, 
organs  of  one  Spirit  working  towards 
one  end,  and  that  end  the  religion  of 
Christ. 

In  Christ  he  will  see  the  full  purpose  of 
that  Spirit  realized  :  and  in  the  apostolic 
writers  he  will  recognize  a  full  measure  of 
His  inspiration.  He  will  ‘  put  himself  to 
school  ’  with  each  book  of  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  in  turn,  to  learn  its  lessons  about 
Christ  and  His  will.  He  will  find  the  best 
reason  for  believing  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
did  guide  the  apostolic  writers  ‘  into  all 
the  truth  ’  about  Christ.  He  need  not 
believe  that  there  are  no  mistakes  or  in¬ 
accuracies  in  the  New  Testament  narra¬ 
tives  ;  but  he  will  recognize  that  we  have 
there,  when  we  judge  the  narratives  simply 
as  historical  documents,  trustworthy  his¬ 
torical  material ;  and  in  the  spirit  which 


> 


INSPIRATION  OF  SCRIPTURE  I49 

animated  the  writers  he  will  see  the  Spirit 
of  truth. 

I  do  not  think,  then,  that  one  who  has 
come  to  believe  in  Christ,  on  the  grounds, 
partly  moral  and  spiritual  and  partly  his¬ 
torical,  which  lead  to,  and  justify,  such  be¬ 
lief — I  do  not  think  that  he  will  find  any 
difficulty  in  believing  that  the  Scriptures, 
both  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  are 
‘  given  by  inspiration  of  God/  and,  as 
such,  are  ‘  profitable  for  teaching,  for  re¬ 
proof,  for  correction,  for  instruction  in 
righteousness  ;  that  the  man  of  God  may 
be  complete,  furnished  completely  unto 
every  good  work.’  1 

And  the  more  he  believes  this,  the  more 
thankful  he  may  well  become  that  the 
church  has  given  no  definition  of  inspira¬ 
tion,  and  that  he  is  tied  to  no  doctrine  of 
the  infallibility  of  every  statement  of 
Scripture. 


1  2  Tim.  iii.  16,  17. 


LECTURE  VIII 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND  THE  CHURCH  OF 

ENGLAND 

Throughout  these  lectures  I  have  been 
endeavouring  to  vindicate  the  superiority 
of  the  doctrine  about  God  and  nature  and 
man,  which  is  expressed  in  summary  in  the 
catholic  creeds,  over  the  ideas  of  the  New 
Theology.  What,  therefore,  according  to 
my  contention,  we  ought  to  do  is  by  all 
means  in  our  power  to  bring  men  back  to 
the  point  of  view  of  the  creeds,  or  to  the 
mind  of  the  church  which  formulated  the 
creeds. 

For  what  has  given  the  New  Theology  its 
advantage  is  partly  the  fact  that  the  type 
of  ‘  orthodoxy  ’  which  prevailed  in  Eng¬ 
land — the  Protestant  orthodoxy  of  the 
earlier  nineteenth  century — in  certain  im¬ 
portant  respects  had  given  an  expression 
of  Christian  truth  quite  inferior  to  that  of 
the  ancient  church.  Thus  we  have  been 


150 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 5 1 

suffering  from  a  largely  legitimate  reaction 
against  the  defects  of  this  Protestant  or¬ 
thodoxy,  just  as  at  the  Reformation  the 
disastrous  division  of  Christendom  into 
national  or  sectional  ‘  churches  ’  was  due 
to  a  reaction — again  a  largely  legitimate 
reaction — against  the  excesses  and  perver¬ 
sions  of  the  mediaeval  church. 

In  particular  the  Protestant  orthodoxy 
of  the  nineteenth  century  had  three  special 
defects. 

First,  it  was  largely  coloured  by  Deism  in 
its  conception  of  God.  It  disposed  men  to 
think  of  Him  as  the  creator  who  made  the 
world,  and  the  great  emperor  who  rules  it, 
as  from  outside,  and  whose  action  was 
exhibited  in  occasional  ‘  interventions/ 
The  evidence  for  the  prevalence  of  this  one¬ 
sided  conception  is  sufficiently  to  be  found 
in  the  fact  that  the  New  Theology,  in  em¬ 
phasizing,  again  with  a  one-sided  emphasis, 
the  counter  truth  of  God’s  immanence  in 
nature,  proclaims  it  as  a  new  truth,1  and  is 
even  naively  unconscious  how  familiar  this 
counter  truth  was  in  the  original  Christian 
theology.  This  oversight — which  is  in  any 
case  strange  after  so  much  modern  writing 

1  See  The  Substance  of  Faith ,  p.  1. 


152 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 


on  the  ancient  lines — has  only  been  possible 
because  the  aspect  of  truth  expressed  in 
the  divine  immanence  had  been  so  largely 
forgotten  in  current  orthodoxy.  However, 
if  it  was  not  actually  expressed  in  the 
creeds,  it  was,  as  I  have  said,  thoroughly 
familiar  in  the  church  which  formulated  the 
creeds.  And  it  is  a  prominent  idea  in  the 
New  Testament.  It  is  expressed  in  such 
phrases  as  ‘  In  him  all  things  consist/ 
which  imply  that  God,  the  eternal  Word, 
is  the  immanent  principle  of  order  and 
system  of  the  world  ;  or  again,  ‘  In  him 
we  live  and  move  and  are/  ‘  We  are  all  his 
offspring/  which  imply  that  humanity 
exists  in  God  and  is  in  the  image  of  God,  in 
spite  of  the  hindering  or  obscuring  effect  of 
sin.  Here  we  have  the  ground  for  all  that 
reverence  for  nature  and  natural  law,  and 
all  that  regard  for  human  nature,  which  the 
New  Theology  found  lacking  in  current 
orthodoxy.  All  that  proper  reverence  for 
nature  and  for  man,  as  the  expression  of 
God,  is  present  in  the  original  Christian 
theology,  which  at  the  same  time  keeps  in 
the  forefront  of  its  teaching  that  thought 
of  God  which  forms  the  substance  of  the 
revelation  on  which  it  bases  its  claims  to 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 53 

teach — the  thought  of  God  as  independent 
of  the  world  and  supreme  over  it,  supreme¬ 
ly  free  in  His  own  moral  personality  and 
power  as  the  creator  and  the  redeemer  and 
the  judge. 

Its  tendency  to  Deism  was,  then,  the  first 
defect  of  the  Protestant  orthodoxy  of  the 
last  century. 

The  second  defect  was  that  it  rested  its 
system  upon  the  infallibility  of  Scripture 
as  a  record,  so  that  no  seemingly  scientific  or 
historical  statement  of  Scripture  could  be 
otherwise  than  true.  Now  I  do  not  think 
that  I  am  exaggerating  when  I  say  that 
that  position  has  been  riddled  by  modern 
science  and  historical  criticism,  and  is  no 
longer  reasonably  tenable.  It  is  cruelty 
to  young  people  to  bring  them  up  in  the 
belief  that  a  statement  in  the  Bible  about 
natural  processes,  or  a  statement  in  his¬ 
torical  form,  is  necessarily  ‘  true,  because  it 
is  in  the  Bible.'  The  Bible  was  not  given 
to  teach  us  science,  and  its  allusions  to 
natural  facts  and  processes  are  expressed 
in  terms  of  the  beliefs  of  its  day ;  though 
doubtless  there  is  remarkably  little  either  in 
the  Old  or  the  New  Testament  that  is  con¬ 
trary  to  our  present  science.  Again,  the 


154  the  new  theology  and 

Bible  is  a  literature  which,  like  the  litera¬ 
ture  of  every  other  nation,  contains  ‘  his¬ 
tory  *  of  the  most  variable  degrees  of 
accuracy.  Inspiration,  which  we  rightly 
ascribe  to  the  books,  or,  more  strictly,  to 
the  writers  of  the  Bible,  is  not  the  same 
thing  as  infallibility  or  inerrancy.  It 
means  that  the  Spirit  of  God  was  ‘  speaking 
by  prophets,’  and,  especially  through  the 
Jewish  race,  was  guiding  men  to  right  in¬ 
stead  of  wrong  thoughts  about  God  and 
nature  and  man  and  sin  and  redemption. 
This  work  of  inspiration  has  its  centre  and 
culmination  in  Christ,  and  it  is  in  His 
person,  and  the  revelation  of  God  involved 
in  His  person,  that  the  faith  of  the  church 
is  centred.  This  is  formulated  in  the 
creeds.  It  rests  upon  the  witness  of  the 
apostles  to  the  teaching  of  Jesus  Christ  and 
to  His  acts,  and  to  certain  crucial  events  of 
His  life,  especially  His  resurrection  from 
the  dead.  Facts  thus  become  of  the  first 
importance  in  our  creed ;  but  where  the 
facts  become  of  the  first  importance,  the 
historical  evidence  becomes  also  first-rate 
evidence,  which  would  be  accepted  as  satis¬ 
factory  in  other  departments  of  history. 
And  it  is  upon  the  strength  of  the  apostolic 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 55 

witness,  and  not  upon  the  infallibility  of  the 
history  given  in  the  whole  area  of  the  litera¬ 
ture  of  Scripture,  that  we  rest  the  security 
of  our  creed  in  matters  of  fact.  We  need 
to  return,  then,  to  the  point  of  view  of  the 
creeds,  and  to  be  thankful  that  the  only 
affirmation  there  made  about  the  inspira¬ 
tion  of  Scripture  is  that  the  Holy  Ghost 
‘  spake  by  the  prophets/ 

Thirdly,  the  Protestant  orthodoxy  cen¬ 
tred  itself  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  atone¬ 
ment  rather  than  of  the  incarnation,  at  the 
same  time  as  it  tended  to  give  that  doctrine 
an  expression  against  which  the  moral 
sense  of  the  world  revolted.  As  I  have  said, 
you  cannot  well  exaggerate  the  importance 
of  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement,  or  the 
appeal  which  the  divine  sacrifice  has  made 
to  the  heart  of  man.  But  it  has  been 
formulated  in  no  dogma,  save  so  far  as  the 
creed  confesses  that  Christ  suffered  ‘  for 
us/  Our  faith  is  centred  by  the  creeds 
upon  the  person  of  Christ,  and  the  revela¬ 
tion  of  God  given  in  Him,  and  upon  the 
crucial  events  of  our  Lord’s  life  in  the  flesh, 
by  which  our  redemption  was  vindicated 
and  assured.1 

1  I  am  not  concerned  here  to  ask  how  far  these  same 


156  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 

Once  again  we  need  to  return  to  the 
point  of  view  of  the  creeds. 

I  am  well  aware  that  there  will  be  many 
to  tell  me  that  it  is  mere  f  obscurantism  ’ 
to  maintain  that  the  ideas  of  the  creeds  are 
the  best  guides  to  ultimate  truth  which  the 
modern  world  possesses.  I  must  leave  to 
others  the  metaphysical  vindication  of  the 
Christian  idealism.1  But  I  must  say  a 
word  to  those  who  plead  that  to  identify 
Christianity  with  a  doctrine  of  miracles  is 
to  place  it  in  inevitable  opposition  to  the 
intellectual  spirit  of  our  age.  The  really 
cogent  evidence  of  religion,  it  is  urged, 
must  be  found  in  facts  of  present  spiritual 
experience ;  not  in  past  events  of  dis¬ 
putable  evidence,  and  of  a  kind  which  con¬ 
flict  with  such  a  conception  of  the  order  of 
the  world  as  science  is  perpetually  strength- 

tendencies,  or  other  tendencies  as  harmful,  were  prevalent 
in  the  Catholic  orthodoxy  of  the  same  period.  I  am 
simply  taking  the  fact  that  there  was  dominant  in 
England  a  certain  orthodox  Protestantism,  and  am  con¬ 
cerned  with  the  defects  of  that  alone,  as  it  is  against 
that  alone  that  the  New  Theology  is  in  reaction. 

1  I  think  that  the  work  of  Mr.  Inge,  Personal  Idealism 
and  Mysticism  (Longmans),  and  Mr.  Illingworth’s 
Personality  Human  and  Divine,  will  perhaps  assist 
the  ordinary  student  to  see  his  way  better  than  any 
other  recent  books. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 57 

ening,  and  which  tends  to  make  miracles 
practically  unbelievable. 

I  should,  of  course,  be  the  first  to  agree  that 
the  most  cogent  evidence  of  religion  lies  in 
present  spiritual  experience  ;  for  it  is  pre¬ 
sent  spiritual  experience,  our  own  and  that 
of  others,  which  constitutes  the  present 
witness  of  the  Spirit.  But  the  present 
witness  carries  us  back  to  Christ.  And  He, 
we  contend,  cannot  be  otherwise  legiti¬ 
mately  interpreted  than  as  the  church  has 
always  interpreted  Him.  The  Christian 
church  has  believed  in  Him,  not  only  as  the 
teacher  of  the  truth,  but  as  God  incarnate, 
who  made  evident,  in  one  memorable 
moment  of  history,  by  His  power  over  nature 
and  by  His  resurrection  from  the  dead,  that 
the  moral  will  of  the  Father,  the  supremely 
free  will  of  love,  is  really  the  one  power  which 
is  over  all  and  through  all.  The  real  enemies 
of  the  Christian  spirit  are  the  naturalism 
which  denies  the  deadliness  of  sin  and  the 
necessity  for  redemption  in  each  single 
man,  and  the  pessimism  which  denies  the 
sovereignty  of  love  in  the  world  as  a  whole. 
The  victory  of  the  Christian  spirit  over  these 
constant  tendencies  of  thought  and  feeling 
is  bound  up  with  its  belief  in  God  as  He 


1 58  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 

has  revealed  Himself  in  Christ — in  God  who 
expresses  Himself  in  nature,  but  is  supreme 
over  nature  ;  and  it  is  precisely  this  belief 
which  Christ’s  miracles  have  inspired  and 
confirmed. 

There  is  the  deepest  reason  to  believe  that 
the  actual  power  which  Christianity  has 
exhibited  in  the  world,  its  power  to  lift 
human  life  and  to  create  a  new  type  of 
civilization,  is  due  to  its  fundamental  and 
distinctive  ideas.  In  everyday  experience 
we  see  such  evidences  of  inconsistency 
between  ideas  and  practice,  between  the 
professed  beliefs  of  men  and  their  actual 
conduct — we  see  so  often  pagan  practice 
associated  with  nominal  orthodoxy,  and 
Christian  conduct  in  individuals  associated 
with  more  or  less  of  unbelief  in  the  Christian 
creed — that  we  are  disposed  to  doubt 
whether  theological  ideas  have  very  much 
real  influence  over  life  as  a  whole.  But 
history,  on  a  broad  view,  corrects  this  ten¬ 
dency.  As  we  look  at  the  long  reaches  of 
history  we  see  in  fact,  and  indisputably, 
that  the  practical  character  of  a  civilization 
coheres  with  its  ultimate  theological  prin¬ 
ciples  ;  that  the  theology  of  the  Buddha, 
and  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  of  Mahomet,  lies  at 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 59 

the  root  of  a  quite  distinct  civilization  and 
type  of  character,  which,  when  you  exa¬ 
mine  it,  proves  to  be  in  the  most  intimate 
connexion  with  its  ideas  of  God.  ‘  The 
only  really  important  changes  in  human 
history,  those  from  which  new  types  of 
civilization  proceed,  take  place  in  the  ideas, 
the  conceptions,  and  the  beliefs  of  men. 
The  memorable  events  of  history  are  the 
effects  of  invisible  changes  in  the  thoughts 
of  men/  1  It  is  the  Christian  idea  of  God 
which  has  lain  at  the  root  of  Christian 
civilization  and  progress ;  and  the  re¬ 
covery  and  maintenance  and  diffusion  to 
new  races  of  this  civilization,  and  its 
capacity  for  progress,  depend  at  bottom 
upon  the  maintenance  of  the  fundamental 
ideas  of  God  which  are  summarized  in  the 
catholic  creeds,  in  which  the  real  spirit  of  the 
Christianity  of  history  has  expressd  itself. 

It  is  the  strength  of  the  Church  of  Eng¬ 
land  to  stand  upon  the  faith  of  these  creeds, 
and  on  the  basis  of  this  fundamental  unity 
to  afford  the  greatest  possible  compre¬ 
hensiveness.  When  Christianity  came  into 
the  world  it  took  shape  in  a  catholic  society 
which  had  three  chief  characteristics. 

1  Gustav  Le  Bon,  Psychologie  des  joules  (Paris  1907),  p.  2. 


l6o  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 

1.  Its  outward  constitution  as  a  coherent 
society  took  shape  universally  in  the  suc¬ 
cessions  of  the  bishops,  who  with  their 
assistant  officers  were  the  ministers  of  the 
wrord  and  of  the  sacraments  of  the  church, 
and  wffio  wrere  in  each  local  church  the  cen¬ 
tres  of  unity,  and  also  the  links  of  unity 
between  the  different  congregations  in  all 
nations  and  the  maintainers  of  the  con¬ 
tinuous  life  of  the  whole  church  down  the 
generations. 

2.  The  faith  of  the  church  expressed  it¬ 
self  (in  slightly  different  forms  in  different 
places,  but  with  substantial  identity),  in 
the  creeds. 

3.  The  canon  of  Scripture — that  is,  the  col¬ 
lection  of  the  writings  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  of  the  apostles  and  their  companions 
in  the  New  Testament — was  formed,  in  order 
that  the  church  might  be  kept  constantly 
in  touch  with  the  original  revelation,  on 
the  maintenance  of  which  its  healthy  life 
depended. 

These  three  elements  of  historical  Chris¬ 
tianity,  beside  which  nothing  else  can,  in 
at  all  a  like  sense,  claim  catholicity,  have 
been  preserved  to  the  Church  of  England, 
and,  in  spite  of  all  her  weaknesses  and  un- 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 6 1 

faithfulnesses,  give  her  a  unique  opportunity 
and  responsibility  in  the  present  Christian 
world. 

It  is  with  the  second  of  these  elements 
alone,  the  creeds,  that  we  are  now  directly 
concerned. 

The  fact  that  the  Church  of  England 
stands  upon  the  creeds,  and  substantially 
upon  the  creeds  only,  by  way  of  doctrinal 
requirement,  constitutes  her  great  oppor¬ 
tunity. 

When  I  speak  of  doctrinal  requirements, 
I  am  speaking  chiefly  of  requirements  upon 
the  officers  of  the  church,  the  clergy.  On 
joining  the  church,  indeed,  in  baptism,  or 
on  receiving  the  full  status  of  church  mem¬ 
bership  in  confirmation,  the  church  claims 
the  assent  of  the  layman,  also,  to  the  faith 
of  the  Apostles’  Creed.  And  the  creeds  are 
recited  in  our  services  in  the  language  of  the 
people,  so  that  profession  of  faith  is  prac¬ 
tically  more  prominent  in  our  public  ser¬ 
vices  than  in  those  of  any  other  part  of  the 
church  of  Christ.  But  the  responsibility 
of  joining  in  our  services,  and  of  approach¬ 
ing  the  Communion,  is  left  to  the  con¬ 
science  of  the  layman,  with  whatever 
assistance  or  counsel  he  may  like  to 

ii 


162 


THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 


seek  ;  and  I  trust  it  may  continue  so  to 
be  left. 

On  the  clergy  a  more  definite  require¬ 
ment  is  made.  Day  by  day,  and  service  by 
service,  the  minister  is  required,  as  leader 
of  the  congregation,  to  say  ‘  I  believe,’ 
and  to  profess  his  faith  thus  solemnly  and 
constantly  in  the  explicit  and  unmistakable 
phrases  of  the  creeds.  Now  I  am  sure  that 
it  is  quite  necessary  that  we  should  main¬ 
tain  in  the  whole  community  the  sense  of 
the  moral  obligation  of  the  man,  who  thus 
stands  to  profess  his  personal  faith  as 
leader  of  the  congregation,  really  to  be¬ 
lieve  what  he  thus  solemnly  professes  to 
believe,  in  terms  which  are  deliberately 
unambiguous.  The  maintenance  of  this 
principle  of  good  faith  is  necessary,  not  only 
for  the  sake  of  the  Christian  religion,  but 
in  the  general  interests  of  professional 
honesty.  I  have  taken  occasion  before  now 
to  make  it  evident  that,  as  far  as  I  can 
secure  it,  I  will  admit  no  one  into  this 
diocese,  or  into  holy  orders,  to  minister  for 
the  congregation,  who  does  not  ex  animo 
believe  the  creeds. 

I  am  supported  in  this  resolution,  I  feel 
sure,  by  the  general  mind  of  the  church. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  163 

I  know  that  I  am  supported  by  the  bishops 
of  this  province  of  the  church.  Twice  re¬ 
cently  the  bishops  of  the  province  of  Can¬ 
terbury  have  solemnly  declared  that  they 
are  ‘  resolved  to  maintain  unimpaired  the 
Catholic  faith  in  the  Holy  Trinity  and  in  the 
Incarnation,  as  contained  in  the  Apostles’ 
and  Nicene  Creeds,  and  in  the  Quicunque 
Vult ,  and  regard  the  faith  thus  presented, 
both  in  statements  of  doctrine  and  in 
statements  of  fact,  as  the  necessary 
basis  on  which  the  teaching  of  the  church 
reposes.’ 

We  must  be  very  gentle  with  scrupulous 
and  anxious  consciences.  We  must  be 
very  patient  with  men  under  the  searching 
and  purifying  trial  of  doubt.  But  when 
a  man  has  once  arrived  at  the  steady  con¬ 
viction  that  he  cannot  honestly  affirm  a 
particular  and  unambiguous  article  of  the 
creed,  in  the  sense  which  the  church  of  which 
he  is  a  minister  undoubtedly  gives  to  it,  the 
public  mind  of  the  church  must  tell  him 
that  he  has  a  right  to  the  freedom  of  his 
own  opinion,  but  that  he  can  no  longer, 
consistently  with  public  honour,  hold  the 
office  of  the  ministry.1 

1  With  regard  to  the  minatory  clauses  of  the  Quicunque 


1 64  THE  new  theology  and 

But  if  a  real  assent  of  heart  and  will  and 
intellect  to  the  teaching  of  the  creeds  is  re¬ 
quired  of  the  clergy,  I  think  that  substan¬ 
tially  nothing  else  of  a  doctrinal  kind  is 
required  of  them.  I  mean  that  a  man  who 
believes  the  Creed  is  not  likely  to  be 
troubled  with  any  reasonable  difficulty  in 
making  the  doctrinal  assent  required  of 
him  when  he  is  ordained,  or  when  he  accepts 
any  particular  charge  in  the  church.  He  is 
required  to  profess  that  he  ‘  assents  to  the 
Thirty-nine  Articles  and  to  the  Book  of 
Common  Prayer,  and  to  the  Ordering  of 
bishops,  priests,  and  deacons  ;  and  that  he 
believes  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  of 
England  as  therein  set  forth  to  be  agreeable 
to  the  Word  of  God  ;  and  that  in  public 
prayer  and  administration  of  the  sacra¬ 
ments  he  will  use  the  form  in  the  said  book 
prescribed  and  none  other,  except  so  far 
as  shall  be  ordered  by  lawful  authority/ 

Vult ,  the  mind  of  the  present  church  is  practically 
unanimous  in  the  sense  which  it  intends  them  to  bear. 
In  reciting  these  clauses,  with  a  large  qualification  which 
is  not  expressed,  I  am  certainly  only  doing  what  the 
church  which  commissions  me  bids  me  to  do.  At  the 
same  time  I  think  this  unexpressed  qualification  is  so 
considerable,  and  the  fact  that  it  is  unexpressed  leads 
to  so  much  misunderstanding  and  scandal,  that  the 
clauses  in  question  are  unsuitable  for  public  recitation 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 65 

Time  was  when  the  clergy  were  required 
to  profess  a  very  much  stricter  adherence 
to  the  Articles.  But  the  phraseology  of  the 
declaration  was  in  1867,  by  the  combined 
authority  of  the  Convocations  and  of  Parlia¬ 
ment,  made  much  more  general — i.e.  an 
assent  only  to  the  doctrine  as  contained  in 
a  series  of  documents  as  a  whole  ;  and  I  do 
not  believe  that  any  one  who  believes  the 
fundamental  creeds,  and  is  conscientiously 
prepared  to  teach  the  Catechism,  and  to 
use  the  services  authorized  for  common 
worship  and  the  administration  of  the 
sacraments,  ought  to  have  any  reasonable 
scruple  in  accepting  the  ministry  in  the 
Church  of  England.1 

1  Of  one  more  scruple,  that  arising  out  of  the  declara¬ 
tion  required  by  those  who  are  to  be  ordained  deacons, 
as  to  faith  in  the  Scriptures,  I  have  spoken  in  my  charge 
on  The  Spiritual  Efficiency  of  the  Church  (Murray,  1904), 
pp.  70,  71  :  ‘We  are  required,  before  we  can  be  ad¬ 
mitted  to  the  order  of  deacons,  to  express  our  “  unfeigned 
belief  in  all  the  canonical  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments  "  ;  but  that  expression  of  belief  can  be 
fairly  and  justly  made  by  any  one  who  believes  heartily 
that  the  Bible  as  a  whole  records  and  contains  the 
message  of  God  in  all  its  stages  of  delivery,  and  that 
each  one  of  the  books  contains  some  element  or  aspect  of 
this  revelation.  In  other  words,  I  “  unfeignedly  believe 
all  the  Scriptures,"  if  I  believe  them  to  contain  and 
embody  the  Word  of  God.  This  definition  of  the  mean- 


l66  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 

We  need  to  make  the  doctrinal  position 
of  the  Church  of  England,  both  as  to  its 
central  requirement  upon  its  ministers,  and 
as  to  the  differences  of  opinion  which  it 
allows,  much  more  explicit  and  clearly 
understood  than  it  is  at  present. 

The  Church  of  England  requires  its 
ministers  to  mean  what  they  say  when,  as 
leaders  of  the  congregation,  they  recite  the 
central  creeds  of  Christendom,  or  say  ‘  I 
believe.' 

They  are  required  to  accept  the  position 
of  the  Church  of  England  as  stated  in  its 
formularies  and  services  in  general,  and  to 
be  able  to  use  conscientiously  the  forms  of 
worship  and  administration  of  the  sacra¬ 
ments  which  are  of  authority,  and  to  teach 
the  catechism. 

They  are  required  to  give  a  special 

ing  of  the  question  I  have  often  repeated.  I  am  de¬ 
lighted  to  find  that  it  agrees  with  the  definition  given 
by  one  who  was  the  weightiest  opponent  of  what  is 
commonly  called  the  Higher  Criticism — I  mean  the  late 
Bishop  of  Oxford.  “  That  is  the  sum  of  the  sense  in 
which  you  may  interpret  this  question  according  to  the 
intentio  imponentis  :  do  you  believe  the  Holy  Scripture 
as  the  Word  of  life,  as  containing  in  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments  the  revelation  of  the  purpose  and  work  of 
Almighty  God  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord  ?  ”  ’  See 
Stubbs,  Ordination  Addresses  (Longmans),  pp.  404,  1. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 67 

promise  to  teach  out  of  the  Scriptures,  and 
to  lay  nothing  upon  their  hearers,  as  binding 
upon  their  faith,  except  what  is  contained 
in  Scripture. 

This  gives  us  a  sufficient  basis  for  doc¬ 
trinal  unity,  and  gives  room  for  different 
‘  schools  of  thought/  such  as  have  existed 
and  will  exist,  within  the  church  ;  but  all 
upon  the  basis  of  the  great  agreement, 
which  should  be  constantly  made  evident. 

If  these  simple  principles  are,  as  I  believe 
they  are,  of  general  acceptance  amongst  us, 
it  would  be  an  immense  gain  if  they  could 
be  explicitly  and  constantly  declared,  so 
that  it  should  be  known  throughout 
Christendom  what  we  really  stand  both  to 
require  and  to  allow. 

In  the  matter  of  ritual,  we  require  each 
of  our  clergy,  whenever  he  undertakes  a 
public  charge,  to  promise,  in  public  prayers 
and  administration  of  the  sacraments,  to 
use  only  the  services  of  the  Prayer  Book, 
except  so  far  as  lawful  authority  (which 
must  mean  for  him,  at  least  the  authority 
of  the  bishop)  allows  some  additional  or 
exceptional  prayers.  This  is  to  secure  that 
in  all  our  churches  the  same  services  shall 
be  rendered,  and  intelligently  and  intel- 


1 68  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 

ligibly  rendered  ;  and  may  be  so  inter¬ 
preted  as  to  admit  of  wide  variety  in  the 
ceremonial  exhibition  of  the  services,  with 
due  regard  to  the  feelings  of  congregations, 
and  due  regard  to  such  explicit  directions, 
as  to  the  meaning  of  which  there  is  no 
doubt,  as  the  Prayer  Book  contains. 

Here  again  we  need  to  make  as  explicit 
as  possible  both  our  basis  of  unity  and  our 
limits  of  comprehension.  But  we  are  con¬ 
cerned  now  only  with  our  standards  of 
doctrine. 

It  is  a  great  advantage  to  stand  simply  on 
the  ancient  creeds.  If  we  look  in  the  direc¬ 
tion  of  the  Nonconformists,  we  cannot  fail 
to  see  the  difficulty  in  which  they  find  them¬ 
selves  as  regards  standards  of  doctrine. 
They  have  stood,  in  their  origin  and  during 
their  past  history,  on  the  old  Protestant 
orthodoxy,  of  which  the  corner-stone  was 
the  dogma  of  the  infallibility  and  sole  autho¬ 
rity  of  Scripture.  And  it  is  precisely  this 
position  which  recent  criticism  has  rendered 
most  untenable.  Historical  inquiry  has 
replaced  the  canon  of  Scripture  in  its  con¬ 
text  as  part  of  the  same  formative  growth 
with  the  creeds  and  the  episcopal  succes¬ 
sions — part  of  the  same  growth,  and  resting 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  169 

upon  the  same  authority.  It  has  become 
more  and  more  difficult  to  maintain  the 
authority  of  the  Bible,  as  a  standard  of 
doctrine,  apart  from  the  authority  of  the 
creeds  and  mind  of  the  church.  And  still 
more  it  has  become  impossible  to  maintain 
the  proposition  of  the  infallibility  of  all  the 
statements  of  Scripture,  simply  because 
they  are  in  Scripture.  During  the  recent 
discussion  of  the  New  Theology  there  have 
been  signs  of  a  wide-spread  anxiety  among 
Nonconformists,  who  feel  the  perils  of  the 
‘  down-grade  ’  movement,  as  to  the  standard 
of  doctrine.  There  is  nothing  which  in 
this  respect  can  rival  the  ancient  creeds. 

On  the  other  hand,  we  hold  a  position  of 
immense  advantage,  as  compared  to  the 
Roman  Church,  in  being  free  from  the  en¬ 
cumbrance  of  dogmas  or  doctrines  which  it 
is  not  lawful  to  deny,  but  which  are  a 
grievous  offence  to  the  critical  spirit.  For 
instance,  the  doctrine  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception  of  Mary  is  in  the  strictest  sense 
binding  upon  the  faith  of  Roman  Catholics. 
It  is,  if  true,  an  event  in  history  ;  but  its 
proclamation  as  a  dogma  rests  on  no  sort 
of  historical  evidence  or  even  tradition, — 
on  nothing  except  the  flimsy  foundation  of 


170  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 

a  logic  of  the  a  priori  sort  which  is  most 
fallible,  the  sort  of  logic  which  seeks  to 
determine,  apart  from  evidence,  how  things 
must  have  happened.  Again,  the  Roman 
Church  celebrates,  on  one  of  its  festivals  of 
greatest  solemnity  and  obligation,  the  as¬ 
sumption  of  the  body  of  Mary  into  heaven  : 
again  a  supposed  event,  which  rests  upon 
nothing  which  can  be  called  historical 
evidence. 

Once  more,  the  central  authority  in  the 
Roman  Church  has  repeatedly,  of  recent 
years,  sought  to  fasten  upon  those  in  its 
communion  the  obligation  to  hold  for  true 
every  statement  of  Scripture — to  hold  the 
doctrine  of  verbal  inspiration  in  its  com- 
pletest  form.  The  late  Pope,  Leo  XIII., 
in  his  Encyclical  ‘  On  the  Study  of  Sacred 
Scripture  ’ — issued  in  1893 — wrote  thus 
with  absolute  decision  and  complete  autho¬ 
ritativeness  of  tone  : 

It  is  absolutely  wrong  and  forbidden,  either  to 
narrow  inspiration  to  certain  parts  only  of  Holy 
Scripture,  or  to  admit  that  the  sacred  writer  has 
erred.  For  the  system  of  those  who,  in  order  to  rid 
themselves  of  these  difficulties,  do  not  hesitate  to 
concede  that  divine  inspiration  regards  the  things  of 
faith  and  morals,  and  nothing  beyond,  because  (as 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 7 1 

they  wrongly  think)  in  a  question  of  the  truth  or 
falsehood  of  a  passage,  we  should  consider,  not  so 
much  what  God  has  said,  as  the  reason  and  purpose 
which  He  had  in  mind  in  saying  it — this  system  cannot 
be  tolerated.  For  all  the  books  which  the  Church 
receives  as  sacred  and  canonical  are  written,  wholly 
and  entirely,  with  all  their  parts,  at  the  dictation  of  the 
Holy  Ghost ;  and  so  far  is  it  from  being  possible 
that  any  error  can  co-exist  with  inspiration,  that 
inspiration  not  only  is  essentially  incompatible  with 
error,  but  excludes  and  rejects  it  as  absolutely  and 
necessarily  as  it  is  impossible  that  God  Himself,  the 
supreme  Truth,  can  utter  that  which  is  not  true. 

Hence,  because  the  Holy  Ghost  employs  men  as 
His  instruments,  we  cannot,  therefore,  say  that  it 
was  these  inspired  instruments  who,  perchance,  have 
fallen  into  error,  and  not  the  primary  Author.  For, 
by  supernatural  power,  He  so  moved  and  impelled 
them  to  write — He  was  so  present  to  them — that 
the  things  which  He  ordered,  and  those  only,  they 
first  rightly  understood,  then  willed  faithfully  to 
write  down,  and  finally  expressed  in  apt  words  and 
with  infallible  truth.  Otherwise  it  could  not  be  said 
that  He  was  the  Author  of  the  entire  Scripture. 

It  follows  that  those  who  maintain  that  an  error  is 
possible  in  any  genuine  passage  of  the  sacred  writings 
either  pervert  the  catholic  notion  of  inspiration  or 
make  God  the  author  of  such  error. 

And  the  recent  decree  Lamentabili  sane 
condemns,  among  a  number  of  other  pro- 


172  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 

positions,  the  proposition  (xi.)  that  ‘  divine 
inspiration  is  not  so  to  be  extended  to  the 
whole  of  sacred  Scripture  as  that  it  should 
preserve  from  all  mistake  all  and  each  of  its 
parts.’ 1 

We  have  enough  difficulties  and  short¬ 
comings  of  our  own  in  the  Church  of 
England.  We  do  well  to  be  humble  and 
penitent.  But  we  do  well  also  to  be  thank¬ 
ful  that,  while  we  have  preserved  our  stand¬ 
ing-ground  upon  the  ancient  and  catholic 
faith  and  system  of  the  church,  we  are 
exempt  from  dogmas  and  proclamations  of 
authority  which  offer  such  tremendous 
obstacles  to  the  critical  judgement  and  the 
freedom  of  historical  inquiry. 

What  we  need,  then — we  of  the  Church 
of  England — is  to  make  clearer  to  our  own 
minds,  and  then  to  the  minds  of  others,  the 
basis  of  solid  agreement  on  which  we  stand, 
on  the  ground  of  which  we  are  able  to  allow, 
and  ought  to  be  able  to  allow,  without  con¬ 
fusion,  a  wide  comprehension  and  freedom 
of  opinion. 

If  this  could  be  more  clearly  defined  and 
realized  we  could  for  the  most  part  let  our 

1  The  recent  encyclical  of  the  present  Pope  re-empha¬ 
sizes  this  position. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 73 

stale  controversies  drop  for  a  while,  and 
set  ourselves  to  our  great  practical  tasks, 
the  task  of  witnessing  for  Christ  abroad  in 
the  great  non-Christian  world  ;  and,  within 
Christendom,  here  in  our  own  country,  the 
task  of  moral  witness. 

We  are  passing  through  a  great  crisis. 
The  whole  industrial  and  social  fabric  is  in 
process  of  change.  The  movement  that  is 
becoming  dominant  is  what  is  more  or 
less  vaguely  called  socialist.  At  the  heart 
of  it  is  a  great  cry  for  justice,  for  a  more 
equitable  division  of  the  proceeds  of  in¬ 
dustry  ;  for  a  better  life  for  the  masses  of 
the  people  ;  for  a  greater  regard  for  each 
individual  life,  and  especially  for  those  who 
are  too  weak  to  help  themselves.  Now 
this  is  a  movement  with  which  the  Christian 
Church  ought  to  have  at  heart  the  pro- 
foundest  sympathy.  The  Bible  is  full  of 
the  cry  for  justice,  full  of  resentment  at  the 
oppression  of  the  poor.  It  cannot  tolerate 
the  exploiting  of  the  weak  by  the  strong. 
It  is,  indisputably,  in  the  age-long  struggle 
of  rich  and  poor,  on  the  side  of  the  poor.1 
But  all  its  great  social  force — its  great 
wealth  of  social  teaching — has  been  with- 

1  In  development  of  this  phrase  see  Sermon  v.,  p.  274. 


174  THE  NEW  theology  and 

drawn  into  the  background.  It  has  to  be 
brought  to  the  fore  again,  and  set  to  work 
within  every  Christian  conscience  and  in 
every  portion  of  the  Christian  church.  It 
is  the  witness  of  Christianity  which  is  most 
needed  by  the  men  of  to-day. 

What  is  wanted  is  not  the  alliance  of 
Christianity  with  a  political  party,  nor  the 
judgement  of  Christianity  on  an  economic 
theory  ;  but  the  study  by  Christians  of 
their  principles  ;  the  preaching  by  Chris¬ 
tians  of  the  real  moral  meaning  of  their 
brotherhood,  with  its  sacraments  of  fellow¬ 
ship  ;  the  reassertion  in  a  society  which  calls 
itself  Christian  of  the  obligations  of  justice 
and  righteousness.1 

The  doctrines  of  the  creed  which  we  have 
been  considering — the  doctrines  of  God  and 
of  Christ,  of  human  destiny  and  sin  and  re¬ 
demption — are  precisely  the  sources  from 
which  the  Christian  church  derives  its 
insight  and  force  to  aid  in  social  reconstruc- 

1  In  elucidation  of  these  phrases  I  am  venturing  to 
reprint  (seep.  297)  the  recent  report  of  the  Committee  of 
the  Southern  Convocation  and  House  of  Laymen  on 
The  Moral  Witness  of  the  Church  on  Economic  Subjects, 
as  giving  in  some  sense  a  corporate  expression  of  the 
church’s  mind,  which  is  much  more  valuable  than  that 
of  an  individual. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND 


175 


tion.  The  deficiencies  and  perils  of  the  con¬ 
temporary  labour  movement  are  sufficiently 
conspicuous  to  those  who  look  at  it  from 
outside.  If  the  church  were  only  alive  and 
at  work  in  the  hearts  of  the  people,  with  its 
fundamental  moral  witness  well  to  the  fore, 
it  might  supply,  or  it  ought  to  supply,  the 
moral  force  and  purity  which  the  movement 
for  social  redemption  assuredly  needs.  It 
can  supply  also,  under  all  circumstances 
tending  to  depression  and  despair,  the  con¬ 
fidence  of  its  certain  hope. 

Science,  strictly  so  called — it  cannot  be 
too  often  reiterated — has  no  gospel.  It 
affords  us  no  assurance  whatever  against 
the  deterioration  of  our  race,  or  its  extinc¬ 
tion.1  It  takes  impartial  cognizance  of  the 
downward  as  well  as  the  upward  road. 
‘  Science/  says  a  striking  modern  writer,2 
‘  has  promised  us  the  truth,  or  at  least  the 
knowledge  of  such  relations  as  our  intelli¬ 
gence  can  seize  ;  she  has  never  promised  us 
either  peace  or  happiness.  Sovereignly  in¬ 
different  to  our  feelings,  she  does  not  hear 
our  lamentations.  We  must  try  and  live 

1  See  Huxley’s  emphatic  declarations,  cited  below, 
p.  240. 

2  Le  Bon,  op.  cit.,  p.  5. 


1 76  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY  AND 

with  her,  since  nothing  can  bring  back  the 
illusions  which  she  has  banished.’ 

But  ‘  science  ’  is  not  our  only  road  to 
truth.  And  if  the  faith  in  Jesus  Christ  is 
grounded  in  truth  and  reason,  as  we  may 
be  assured  it  is,  we  have  in  that  faith  the 
supreme  safeguard  of  human  hopes ;  in 
Christ  upon  His  throne,  the  ultimate  se¬ 
curity  of  human  destiny.  Beyond  all  the 
decays  of  civilization,  and  all  the  shocks  of 
worlds,  there  is  ‘  the  far-off,  divine  event,’ 
the  establishment  of  the  kingdom  of  Christ, 
in  which  all  the  transitory  disclosures  of 
truth  and  power  and  beauty  in  the  world, 
all  the  achievements  and  intimations  of 
human  thought  and  human  character,  are 
to  be  brought  together  and  consummated 
in  the  City  of  God,  under  the  new  heaven 
and  upon  the  new  earth,  where  God  is  all 
in  all. 

This  security  of  human  hopes  is  bound 
up  with  the  faith  in  God  as  Christ  revealed 
Him,  and  with  the  revelation  of  divine  pur¬ 
pose  for  nature  and  man  which  is  given  in 
summary  and  prophetic  form  in  His  person 
and  life  and  resurrection  and  triumph. 
‘  There  shall  never  be  one  lost  good.’ 

There,  where  Christ  is  on  the  throne,  is 


THE  CHURCH  OF  ENGLAND  1 77 

the  anchor  of  our  hopes,  and  there  is  the 
continual  warning  which  hangs  over  our 
individual  lives  and  our  civilization.  All 
that  will  allow  itself  to  belong  to  Christ,  all 
that  wall  admit  His  redemption,  wall  be, 
quickly  or  slowdy,  gathered  under  His  feet, 
and  into  His  body — all  the  real  riches  of 
humanity,  ‘  the  glory  and  honour  of  all 
nations.’  The  city  of  God  is  thus  the 
assured  goal  of  humanity.  The  divine  pur¬ 
pose  wall  surely  effect  itself.  But  how  much 
of  the  redeeming  purpose  can  be  carried  out 
in  our  lives  and  in  our  civilization  depends 
upon  ourselves.  Our  share  in  the  great 
consummation,  as  individuals,  or  as  a 
nation,  or  as  a  church,  depends  upon  our 
faithfulness  in  allegiance  to  Christ. 

I  say,  faithfulness  in  allegiance  to  Christ. 
But  we  must  include  in  allegiance  to  Christ, 
the  unconscious  allegiance  which  is  in  the 
heart  of  all  those  wTho  are  following  the 
best  light  they  have.  We  Christians  are 
sure  that  all  honest  inquiry  after  the  truth, 
and  all  loyal  following  of  wfhat  in  our  con¬ 
sciences  wre  knowT  and  feel  to  be  the  best,  will 
one  day,  if  not  in  this  life,  yet  beyond  it, 
be  rewarded  with  the  \ision  of  God  and  the 
knowiedge  of  Christ.  The  refusal  of  the 

12 


178  THE  NEW  THEOLOGY 

light,  the  declining  from  what  we  know  to 
be  right,  is  common  enough  in  human  life. 
That  must  separate  us  from  Christ.  But 
nothing  else  can  be  under  His  condemna¬ 
tion.  He  is  the  light  that  lighteneth  every 
man  in  conscience,  even  those  who  know 
Him  not,  or  who  cannot  bring  themselves 
to  acknowledge  Him,  because  He  has  been 
misinterpreted  to  them.  Thus  He  is  the 
goal  of  all  the  strivings  after  good  in  the 
world.  There  is  none  other  name  given 
among  men  whereby  we  must  be  saved, 
than  the  name  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth. 


SERMONS 


179 


SERMON  I 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  1 

In  that  hour  he  rejoiced  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  said,  I 
thank  thee,  O  Father,  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  that  thou 
didst  hide  these  things  from  the  wise  and  understanding, 
and  didst  reveal  them  unto  babes  :  yea,  Father,  for  so  it  was 
well-pleasing  in  thy  sight. — St.  Luke  x.  21. 

Nothing  is  more  instructive  than  to  con¬ 
sider  the  method  of  influencing  men  which 
is  exhibited  in  the  coming  of  the  Christ. 
Any  one  who  is,  even  in  the  vaguest  and 
most  general  sense,  a  Christian,  must  believe 
that  the  divine  providence  is  exhibited  in 
the  conditions  of  His  coming  :  that  it  was 
‘  by  a  determinate  counsel  and  foreknow¬ 
ledge  of  God/  It  is  then,  I  say,  most  in¬ 
structive  to  consider  how  the  wisdom  of 
God  set  aside,  in  the  circumstances  of  our 
Lord’s  coming,  all  the  opportunities  and 
methods  of  influencing  men  which  the 

1  A  sermon  preached  at  Great  St.  Mary’s  before  the 
University  of  Cambridge,  on  Oct.  21,  1906. 

181 


182  the  creed  and  common  life 

imagination  of  men  would  have  suggested. 
Thus  Christ  did  not  come  so  as  to  command 
any  of  the  instruments  of  secular  greatness — 
as  some  great  king  or  emperor  or  powerful 
person.  Again,  he  did  not  come  as  a 
philosopher,  or  so  as  to  have  command  of 
the  influences  of  learning.  Once  more,  He 
did  not  come  so  as  to  fulfil  Plato’s  hope  of 
one  who  should  combine  both  the  accepted 
means  of  influence — that  is,  as  a  philosopher- 
king.  He  was  born  in  circumstances  which 
do  not  suggest  any  opportunities  of  wide 
influence  :  in  an  outlying  and  despised  dis¬ 
trict  of  a  subject-kingdom,  just  about  to 
become  more  subject.  There  was,  indeed, 
nothing  squalid  about  His  origin.  He  was 
born  in  a  family  which  nursed  noble 
memories  and  noble  hopes — ‘  of  the  seed 
of  David  according  to  the  flesh  ’  ;  but  in 
the  circle  of  labouring  men.  And  in  the 
main  it  was  in  the  same  circle — in  the  circle 
of  labouring  people  of  the  best  and  most 
respectable  kind — that  He  found  His  dis¬ 
ciples  and  His  agents.  He  did,  indeed — 
if  we  believe,  as  I  am  sure  we  ought  to  be¬ 
lieve,  the  Fourth  Gospel — give  the  natural 
rulers  of  His  people — the  classes  of  Jews 
who  sat  in  the  seats  of  authority  at  Jeru- 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  1 83 

salem — their  opportunity  of  hearing  and 
accepting  His  message.  But  their  refusal 
compelled  Him  or  (should  we  say  ?)  left  Him 
free  to  found  His  church  in  Galilee,  where 
the  tradition  of  learning  was  weak,  where 
He  could  build  upon  the  unsophisticated 
basis  of  honest  human  nature  in  its  simplest 
form.  And  in  doing  this  He  knew  what 
He  was  doing,  and  knew  that  the  divine 
wisdom  was  in  it.  1  l  thank  Thee,  Father, 
Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  that  Thou  didst 
hide  these  things  from  the  wise  and  under¬ 
standing,  and  reveal  them  unto  babes  :  yea, 
Father,  for  so  it  was  well-pleasing  in  Thy 
sight.’  That  is  the  thanksgiving  of  the 
Son  of  Man,  who  recognizes  that  the  real 
influence  upon  the  world  must  start  not 
from  the  traditions  of  learning,  academic  or 
ecclesiastical,  but  from  the  religious  con¬ 
secration  of  the  common  life  of  labouring 
people. 

St.  Paul,  whose  prejudices  went  in  the 
opposite  direction,  was  brought  to  ac¬ 
knowledge  the  same  divine  principle.1  ‘  It 
is  written  :  I  will  destroy  the  wisdom  of  the 
wise,  and  the  prudence  of  the  prudent  will 
I  reject.  Where  is  the  wise  ?  Where  is 

1  i  Cor.  i.  19  ff. 


184  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

the  scribe  ?  Where  is  the  disputer  of  the 
world  ?  Hath  not  God  made  foolish  the 
wisdom  of  the  world  ?  For  seeing  that  in 
the  wisdom  of  God  the  world  through  its 
wisdom  knew  not  God,  it  was  God’s  good 
pleasure  through  the  foolishness  of  the 
preaching  to  save  them  that  believe.  Seeing 
that  Jews  ask  for  signs  and  Greeks  seek 
after  wisdom  :  but  we  preach  Christ  cruci¬ 
fied,  unto  Jews  a  stumbling-block  and  unto 
Greeks  foolishness.  .  .  .  For  the  foolishness 
of  God  is  wiser  than  men.’  Then  he  points, 
in  evidence  of  his  exultant  recognition  of 
the  method  of  God,  to  the  actual  composi¬ 
tion  of  the  Corinthian  church.  The  ‘  im¬ 
portant  people  *  were  practically  left  out. 
It  was  precisely  to  this  that  the  hostile 
critic  of  Christianity,  Celsus  the  philosopher, 
called  attention  more  than  a  hundred 
years  later,  when  he  says :  ‘  Christians 
must  admit  that  they  can  only  persuade 
people  destitute  of  sense,  position,  or  in¬ 
telligence,  only  slaves,  women,  and  children, 
to  accept  their  faith.’  He  is  only  calling 
attention  to  the  method  of  the  divine  wis¬ 
dom  ;  to  the  fact  which  was  disclosed  to 
the  world  by  Christianity,  that  the  people 
who  are  really  important  are  the  common 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  1 8  5 

labouring  people,  who  have  neither  time 
nor  means  for  much  learning,  and  that  the 
true  influence,  the  divine  wisdom,  must  pro¬ 
ceed  from  the  basis  of  the  common  life  re¬ 
deemed  or  consecrated. 

There  is  a  close  analogy  between  the 
relation  of  Christ  to  learning  and  His 
relation  to  political  influence.  He  deliber¬ 
ately  repudiated  the  political  method ;  He 
inculcated  upon  the  poor  and  the  oppressed 
— not  rebellion  or  agitation,  but  obedience, 
submission,  indifference.  He  founded  a 
community  which  was  reviled  because  it 
conspicuously  ‘  took  no  part  in  politics/ 
But  it  was  a  community  of  human  love  and 
mutual  help.  Therefore  it  effected  an  im¬ 
mense  social  change,  and  produced  the 
profoundest  effect  on  the  politics  of  the 
world,  as  we  may  say,  without  intending  it. 
The  meek  possessed  the  earth. 

So  it  was  with  learning.  The  schools  and 
the  academies  felt  themselves,  not  unnatur¬ 
ally,  disparaged  and  repudiated  by  this  new 
community  ;  and  they  derided  them  ac¬ 
cordingly  in  their  natural  confidence.  But 
this  community  was,  after  all,  made  up  of 
human  beings  ;  they  had  intelligences  and 
talked  the  language  of  their  time.  They 


1 86  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

could  not  help  explaining  themselves  to 
themselves  and  to  the  world  outside — ex¬ 
plaining  themselves,  and  moreover  defend¬ 
ing  against  attacks  the  truth  which  was 
their  life.  They  must,  in  doing  this,  use 
the  intellectual  weapons  ready  to  their 
hand,  they  must  talk  the  language  of  their 
time,  the  language  of  intellectual  Greece. 
So  their  ‘  love  ’  did  marvellously,  accord¬ 
ing  to  St.  Paul’s  prayer,  ‘  abound  in  know¬ 
ledge.’  The  devotion  and  ethical  life  and 
religious  faith  of  the  earliest  Christian 
church  worked  out  into  a  self-conscious 
theology,  which  took  up  and  used  the  in¬ 
tellectual  implements  of  Greece,  just  as  the 
church,  in  another  region,  used  the  political 
organization  of  Rome.  The  process  is 
really  unique  in  history,  because  it  is  so 
corporate  :  so  little  due  to  any  one  man  or 
group  of  men.  As  an  individual  by  being 
cross-questioned  about  his  instinctive 
opinions — Do  you  mean  this  ?  Are  you 
prepared  to  accept  this  conclusion  ?  Can 
you  make  terms  with  this  proposal  ? — as 
an  individual  by  being  so  cross-questioned 
gradually  grows  to  know  his  own  mind 
exactly,  so  it  was  with  the  church.  There 
is  not,  I  think,  in  the  history  of  mankind 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  1 8 7 

any  like  example  of  the  practical  spirit  of 
a  whole  community  making  for  itself  an 
intellectual  expression. 

It  was  not  the  influence  of  any  one  man, 
for  instance  St.  Paul,  imposing  a  philosophy 
upon  the  church.  St.  Paul’s  most  original 
contribution  to  thought — his  theory  of  the 
function  of  the  law,  and  of  the  relation  of 
law  to  grace,  of  which  we  hear  so  much  in 
his  Epistles — produced  surprisingly  little 
effect  upon  the  church  for  fifteen  centuries 
after  his  death,  in  spite  of  Augustine’s  effort 
to  popularize  it.  It  was  the  common  mind, 
the  common  devotion,  that  expressed  itself 
in  the  creeds  and  in  the  theology  of  the 
church.  What  really  defeated  Arianism, 
like  the  other  heresies,  was  the  clear  and 
enthusiastic  Christian  faith  that  the  Lord 
Christ  was  really  God.  A  fathomless  gulf 
distinguishes  the  Creator  from  the  creature, 
God  from  man  ;  and  they  were  sure  that 
Christ  by  His  essential  nature  was  Creator 
and  not  creature.  It  has  been  recently 
argued,  as  if  it  were  a  matter  of  great  mo¬ 
ment,  that  the  Homoousios 1  dogma  was 
finally  accepted  at  Constantinople  in  the 

1  The  dogma  that  the  Son  is  of  one  substance  with 
the  Father. 


1 88  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

sense  of  the  Cappadocian  divines,  Basil  and 
the  Gregories,  and  not  in  the  sense  of  its  first 
champion  Athanasius.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  argument  seems  to  be  very  disputable  ; 
but  what  is  of  chief  importance  is  to  observe 
that  the  church  as  a  whole  was  occupied  in 
a  practical  task — in  affirming  that  it  could 
make  no  terms  with  anything  that  im¬ 
pugned  the  true,  proper  Godhead  of  its 
Lord,  or  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  or  that  in¬ 
troduced  the  idea  of  more  Gods  than  one. 
It  therefore  maintained  the  Trinity  of 
co-equal  Persons  in  the  unity  of  the  God¬ 
head.  So  it  found  itself  enthusiastically 
confessing.  But  it  had  no  independent 
philosophical  interest  in  the  precise  terms 
used  to  defend  its  faith.  And,  as  to  the 
differences  between  Athanasius  and  the 
Cappadocians,  they  were  more  than  covered 
by  the  confession  of  all  the  wisest  minds 
in  Christendom,  that  men  could  not  define 
God — that  their  definitions  would  always 
be  baffled  by  His  glory. 

The  use  of  dogmas  was  to  hedge  round 
and  protect  the  practical  creed.  They  were 
negative.  That  is  to  say,  their  first  object 
was  to  say  ‘No’  to  what  was  repugnant 
to  the  practical  worship  and  to  the  common 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  1 89 

mind  of  faith.  And  it  follows  that  till  men 
lost  the  sense  of  the  end  in  the  pursuit  of 
means,  they  felt  that  the  fewer  dogmas  they 
laid  down  and  the  nearer  they  kept  to  Scrip¬ 
ture  terms  the  better.  But,  of  course,  just 
as  Christianity,  having  used  secular  organi¬ 
zation  became  enslaved  to  it ;  so,  having 
used  terms  and  method  of  philosophy,  it 
came  to  misuse  them  as  religious  ends  in 
themselves,  and  was  carried  far  away  from 
the  purposes  of  Christian  life  and  faith  into 
a  region  of  dogmatic  definitions  which 
‘  ministered  questionings  ’  rather  than 
Christian  faith  and  hope  and  love. 

I  return  to  my  point.  Christianity  de¬ 
voted  itself  to  the  consecration  of  the 
common  life  of  working  people.  This  life, 
to  express  and  protect  itself,  must  perforce 
develop  a  theology,  a  learning,  a  wisdom. 
But  the  strength  of  this  early  intellectual  sys¬ 
tem  of  Christianity  lay  in  its  unacademical 
origin  ;  in  its  remaining  in  very  close  relation 
to  the  common  life  of  common  people — to 
their  simple  worship,  their  moral  wants  and 
satisfactions,  their  sorrows  and  joys  and 
labours.  This  is  to  say,  in  other  words, 
that  the  early  dogmatic  method  of  Chris¬ 
tianity  was  scriptural  and  true  to  Scripture, 


190  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

which  is  practical,  moral  and  devotional, 
not  theoretical  or  academic. 

Scholars  sometimes  contemplate  the  re¬ 
vision  of  the  ancient  catholic  creeds  and 
fundamental  dogmas.  They  say — are  we 
not  endowed  with  all  that  our  fathers  were 
endowed  with  ?  Can  we  not,  now  that 
philosophy  has  changed  its  terms  and 
methods,  revise  the  ancient  formulas,  or  do 
over  again,  for  our  age,  what  they  did  so 
well  for  theirs  ?  There  is  much  to  say  with 
regard  to  a  proposition  which  sounds  so 
reasonable.  But  at  least  this  may  be  said  : 
Can  you  suggest  any  other  or  better  terms 
to  express  the  same  things,  or  is  it  the  case 
that  it  is  not  the  terms  but  the  funda¬ 
mental  mind  that  you  want  altered  ?  If 
the  church  is  right  in  believing  that  Christ 
is  God,  the  Creator,  who  for  our  redemption 
from  the  universal  dominion  of  sin  was 
made  man  ;  and  did  redeem  a  fallen  world 
by  His  life  and  passion  and  resurrection  and 
ascension ;  and  did  by  His  Spirit,  sent 
down  out  of  His  glorified  manhood  at  Pente¬ 
cost,  regenerate  and  unite  to  God  in  Him¬ 
self  the  children  of  faith  all  over  the  world, 
through  the  visible  society  of  redeemed  men 
which  He  founded  with  its  visible  symbols 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  1 9 1 

and  sacraments  of  brotherhood, — if  this, 
and  nothing  short  of  this,  is  what  you  want 
to  express,  can  you  then,  on  this  hypo¬ 
thesis,  suggest  better  terms  to  guard  this 
faith  ?  or  can  you  show  that  such  terms 

w 

have  not  served  their  purpose  ?  or  are  not 
now  needed  ?  or  can  you  even  show  to  be 
unnecessary  anv  one  of  those  four  defini- 
tions  which  the  church  universal  has  made 
binding  ? 1 

I  think  the  answer  is  No.  For,  whenever 
I  come  to  examine  the  intention  of  the 
critics  of  the  church’s  terminology,  I  seem 
always  to  find  that  they  want  not  to  im- 
prove  the  defences,  but  to  abandon  the 
fortress.  They  want  to  allow  the  divinity  of 
Christ  to  mean  something  which  would  be 
true  in  its  measure  of  every  other  man  : 
whereas  the  very  object  of  the  church  was 
to  maintain  the  divinity  of  Christ  in  a  sense 
in  which  it  could  not  possibly  be  applied 
to  any  created  being.  Or  they  want  to 
weaken  the  other  absolutely  vital  element 

1  (i)  That  Christ  is  of  one  substance  with  the  Father ; 
(2)  that  He  was  completely  human ;  (3)  that  His  hu¬ 
manity  had  no  independent  centre  of  personality  in 
itself ;  (4)  but  that  in  the  unity  of  the  one  divine  person 
both  Godhead  and  manhood  remain,  two  natures  in 
one  person. 


192  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

in  the  common  Christian  faith  and  thought 
— viz.  the  belief  in  the  universal  corrup¬ 
tion  or  disorder  of  human  nature  and  the 
fact  that  every  single  human  being  needs 
not  progress  only,  but  recovery.  I,  for  one, 
believe  with  the  profoundest  conviction, 
that  the  hopes  of  humanity  are  bound  up 
with  the  maintenance  of  the  real  Godhead 
of  Christ,  the  reality  of  our  fallen  state,  and 
the  universal  need  for  redemption.  But  at 
least,  whatever  our  religious  opinions,  let 
us  admit  that  the  church,  in  choosing  her 
theological  terms,  was  choosing  terms  to 
guard  exactly  that  line  of  demarcation 
which  it  is  now  proposed  to  obliterate. 
What  is  at  stake  is  not  an  academic  ques¬ 
tion  of  terms,  but  a  question  which  belongs 
essentially  to  the  common  Christian  life  of 
experience  and  worship.  It  is  in  practical 
belief  and  worship  that  men  adore  Christ 
as  their  creator,  as  well  as  redeemer  ;  and 
in  practical  self-knowledge  or  penitence  that 
they  know  the  doctrine  of  innate  sin  and 
the  need  for  the  new  birth. 

i.  Christianity,  then,  in  matters  of  intel¬ 
lect  as  in  social  influence  generally,  works 
upwards  from  below.  That  is  its  essential 
method.  It  does  not  lay  its  basis  in  learn- 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  193 

in g,  or  make  its  start  from  the  learned. 
Where  it  attempts  this  it  forsakes  the 
method  of  Christ.  Rather,  it  exults  to 
recognize  in  the  common  life  of  labouring 
people  and  their  practical  needs  that  which 
is  really  most  important,  that  which  is  the 
chief  pillar  and  ground  of  religious  truth. 
In  the  propagation  of  Christianity,  then, 
the  Christian  does  not  weep,  but  rather 
exults,  with  St.  Paul  and  Christ  Himself, 
if  the  learned  of  any  community  hold  aloof 
or  reject,  while  the  poor  accept.  It  is  what 
we  seem  to  be  witnessing  in  India  to-day. 
I  do  not  know  what  the  witness  of  your 
Cambridge  Mission  at  Delhi  would  be  at  this 
moment.  The  witness  of  our  Oxford  Mis¬ 
sion  is  that  the  twenty-five  years  of  its 
experience  coincides  with  a  manifest 
hardening  of  the  educated  Indian  mind 
against  Christianity.  The  hopes  enter¬ 
tained  of  the  coming  to  Christ  of  the  In¬ 
dians  of  caste  and  position  have  for  the 
present  died  down.  There  are  almost  no 
conversions  of  educated  natives.  But 
meanwhile,  especially  in  the  South  of  India, 
a  great  and  rapidly  increasing  Christian 
community  is  forming  itself  chiefly  from  the 
pariah  population ;  and  these  despised 


194  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

classes  are  showing  themselves  capable  of 
an  earnest  devotion,  of  an  education  and 
a  progress,  which  Indian  opinion  con¬ 
temptuously  regarded  as  impossible  for 
them.  And,  if  we  are  faithful  to  the  antici¬ 
pations  of  the  apostolic  age,  we  shall  not  be 
surprised  or  apologetic.  Rather,  we  shall 
thank  the  Father  and  Lord  of  heaven  and 
earth,  because  He  has  hid  these  things 
from  the  wise  and  prudent,  and  has  revealed 
them  unto  babes. 

2.  Again,  however  long  the  history  of 
Christianity  had  been  in  any  country,  it  still 
remains  true  that  the  strength  of  any 
church  lies  in  the  common  labouring  life. 
It  is  in  being  strong  there — with  the  manual 
worker — that  any  national  church  retains 
the  power  to  show  its  original  spirit  and  the 
power  of  recuperation  and  revival.  In  the 
same  way,  in  any  settled  Christian  com¬ 
munity,  the  strength  of  its  theology  and 
Christian  learning  depends  on  its  being  in 
the  closest  relations  with  popular  piety  and 
religious  life  and  the  teaching  needed  for 
common  people.  This  was  the  case  with 
the  Christian  learning  and  theology  of  the 
first  five  or  six  Christian  centuries.  It  was 
so  closely  in  touch  with  popular  devotion 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  1 95 

that  it  was  able  to  maintain  a  real  control 
over  the  superstition  which  always  accom¬ 
panies  popular  religion.  It  ceased  to  be 
so  with  the  scholasticism  of  the  later  Middle 
Age.  A  loud  cry  arose  in  the  fifteenth  and 
sixtenth  centuries  for  a  simplification  of 
theology — for  a  return  to  what  practically 
mattered.  The  cry  in  part  took  effect  in 
the  Reformation.  But  in  England,  in  spite 
of  Hugh  Latimer,  the  Reformation,  as  it 
was  expressed  in  the  Prayer  Book  and 
Articles,  never  succeeded  in  holding  or  win¬ 
ning  the  popular  heart.  The  Established 
Church  has  always  had  this  great  weakness  : 
that  it  has  worked  downwards  from  above, 
rather  than  upwards  from  below.  It  has 
been  so  with  our  Anglican  theology.  In 
our  age  theological  and  biblical  learning 
has  mainly  started  from  a  critical,  and  there¬ 
fore  necessarily  an  academic,  platform.  It 
has  not  had  the  popular  devotion  and  faith 
behind  it.  Popular  piety  has  in  fact  com¬ 
monly  resented  its  conclusions.  Where 
it  has  not  done  this,  it  has  been  apt  to 
pursue  its  own  course  apart.  As  one  who 
has  had  to  live  in  both  worlds — the  world 
of  theological  learning  and  that  of  practical 
religious  life — may  I  bear  my  witness  ? 


196  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

There  is  a  great  world  of  practical  religious 
devotion,  Catholic  and  Evangelical,  in  Eng¬ 
land  to-day,  which  expresses  itself  in  oral 
teaching,  in  catechism,  manuals,  prayers, 
and  hymns.  But  I  feel  painfully  that  it  is 
further  off  than  it  ought  to  be  from  our 
theological  or  biblical  science,  as  it  is  repre-- 
sented  at  our  universities — that  the  popular 
pulpit  use  of  the  Bible  in  our  communion 
is  still  very  generally  based  upon  critical 
instruments  which  might  long  ago  have 
been  exchanged  for  better  and  truer,  if  the 
learned  world  had  been  in  closer  touch  with 
the  common  religion.  For  in  Christianity 
it  is  the  common  religion  which  has  the 
prerogative  place.  Christian  learning  is 
meant  to  react  upon  it  only  because  it  first 
of  all  has  experienced  its  meaning  and 
needs,  and  proceeded  out  from  it.  May 
I  respectfully  say  to  those  who  are  the  repre¬ 
sentatives  of  religious  learning,  that  they 
should  set  it  before  themselves  as  a  de¬ 
liberate  aim  to  associate  themselves  as 
deeply  as  possible  with  the  common  devo¬ 
tional  life  of  Christianity  as  it  exists  in  the 
church  to-day  ;  so  that  they  may  learn  to  do, 
more  effectively  than  is  being  done  to-day, 
what  is  the  real  business  of  Christian  learn- 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  1 97 

in g — viz.  to  help  and  guide  the  common 
life,  as  they  only  can  do  who,  besides  their 
critical  learning,  know  and  feel  the  su¬ 
premacy  of  the  soul’s  practical  need,  who 
know  what  will  shock  it,  what  will  help  it, 
what  will  hinder — who  know  what  it  will 
welcome,  and  before  what  it  will  fall  back 
distressed,  perplexed,  and  scandalized. 

May  I  give  a  single  example  ?  From 
countless  pulpits  there  is  still  taught  the 
doctrine  of  the  Fall  of  Man  in  a  manner 
which  conflicts  with  what  almost  every 
educated  person  believes  to  be  the  matter 
of  fairly  certain  science.  On  the  other  side 
we  have  a  scientific  doctrine  of  human 
development  and  a  theory  of  ‘  sin  ’  which 
is  verv  often  associated  with  a  lamentable 
ignorance  of  the  most  certain  experiences 
of  Christian  souls  and  of  the  Christian 
church — those  experiences  which  (almost 
more  than  anything  else)  have  ministered 
to  man’s  moral  progress.  What  we  need  is 
men  of  learning  who  have  first  of  all  passed 
through  or  sympathetically  entered  into  the 
Christian  knowledge  of  sin,  and  felt  its  pro¬ 
found  relation  to  all  that  makes  the  Chris¬ 
tian  hope  ;  and  who  then ,  with  this  in  their 
minds,  will  study  scientific  facts  and  ethno- 


198  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

logical  data.  No  one  who  really  studies 
the  original  function  of  Christian  4  wisdom  ’ 
can  say  that  this  is  a  task  alien  to  it. 

Moreover,  criticism  working  by  itself 
teaches  us,  I  think,  its  own  limits.  It  was 
necessary  for  the  sake  of  intellectual  liberty 
that  it  should,  to  start  with,  work  on  its 
own  pure  lines.  By  working  on  its  own 
pure  lines  it  has  (I  must  believe)  recon¬ 
structed,  for  instance,  Old  Testament 
criticism  and  some  departments  of  church 
history.  In  these  regions  the  task  of  the 
mediator  to-day  is,  so  to  study  the  religious 
needs  and  feelings  of  common  people  as 
gradually  to  accommodate  the  devout  use 
of  the  Bible  to  the  standard  of  science. 
But  does  not  criticism  by  its  own  action 
upon  its  own  lines  reach  its  limits  ?  Does 
it  not  to  many  of  us  become  constantly 
more  and  more  apparent,  in  dealing  for 
example  with  the  miracles  of  the  New 
Testament,  and  in  particular  with  those 
singled  out  as  corner-stones  of  faith  in  the 
Apostles’  Creed,  that  the  determination  of 
truth  cannot  rest  with  the  critical  esti¬ 
mate  of  evidence  alone  ?  We  have  worked 
very  hard  at  it.  We  have  sifted  it  very 
thoroughly.  Many  of  us  would  say  that,  on 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  I99 

the  whole,  it  is  those  who  deny  or  doubt  the 
occurrence  of  the  miraculous  facts  who  do 
violence  to  the  evidence.  But  short  of  such 
a  position,  must  not  any  one  admit  that  the 
state  of  the  evidence,  as  based  on  historical 
documents,  is  such  that  the  question 
whether  Christ’s  body  was  really  trans¬ 
formed  on  the  third  day,  and  rose  a  spiri¬ 
tualized  body,  leaving  the  tomb  vacant, 
does  depend  for  each  man  on  the  question 
of  probability,  and  this  is  a  question  of 
what  the  practical  religious  need,  which 
God  was  confessedly  meeting,  really  re¬ 
quired  and  requires  ? 

Again,  the  question  of  whether  we  have 
reason  justifying  the  church  in  teaching 
that  Christ  was  born  of  a  virgin,  depends, 
even  more,  on  considerations  of  what  must, 
or  need  not,  be  regarded  as  probable,  in  the 
case  of  one  recognized  as  incarnate  Son  of 
God  and  sinless  Son  of  Man.  I  feel  that  the 
critic,  merely  as  critic,  ought  to  be  at  pains 
to  find  out  why  I,  a  struggling  human  soul, 
declare,  with  the  profoundest  conviction, 
that  the  strength  of  the  appeal  of  the  Christ 
to  me  is  bound  up,  as  with  His  character  and 
claim,  so  with  His  physical  resurrection  and 
virgin  birth.  The  world — great  nature — 


200  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

seems,  day  by  day,  so  morally  indifferent. 
It  is  the  hardest  thing,  in  work-a-day  life, 
to  believe  that  what  is  really  supreme  is  the 
moral  will  and  the  moral  issue.  The 
human  soul  finds  consolation,  instinctively, 
in  a  miracle  because  it  makes  plain  that 
the  sovereign  power  in  nature  is  really  God 
the  Father — that  the  moral  will  is  really 
supreme  in  and  over  nature.  All  over  the 
world,  from  the  first,  and  still  to-day,  the 
common  consciousness  of  man  cries  out, 
that  the  question  of  miracle  at  the  great 
crisis  of  redemption  makes  all  the  differ¬ 
ence  between  a  speculative  hope  and  a 
jo}rous  confidence.  And  if  God’s  provi¬ 
dence  had  to  do  with  Christ  and  His  ap¬ 
pearance,  if  God  had  a  practical  purpose, 
then  the  need  of  the  human  soul  must  have 
a  real  place  in  that  estimate  of  probability, 
which,  in  the  peculiar  setting  of  the  evi¬ 
dence,  really  becomes  the  determining 
factor,  or  (as  I  should  prefer  to  express  it) 
which  is  necessary  to  break  down  the  bar¬ 
riers  which  the  critical  mind,  in  its  isolation 
from  common  moral  wants,  erects  against 
the  real  force  of  the  evidence.  For  the  sake 
of  criticism  and  for  the  sake  of  common 
religion,  I  plead  for  a  reconsideration  of 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  201 


the  original  or  true  relation  of  Christian 
knowledge  to  the  common  Christian  life — if 
Christian  worship  and  faith, on  theonehand, 
is  not  to  become  superstitious,  and  criticism, 
on  the  other,  barren.  I  plead  with  the 
student  to  make  it  his  business  to  study 
with  a  more  continuous  sympathy  the  re¬ 
ligion  by  the  help  of  which  common  people 
— Christ’s  own  special  folk — are  worshipping 
and  bearing  their  troubles,  gaining  victories, 
and  obtaining  relief. 

3.  Lastly,  I  would  try  to  speak  a  word 
to  any  young  man  who  has  come  to  Cam¬ 
bridge  with  a  strict  faith,  learned  at  home 
and  centred  in  the  Bible,  only  to  find  after 
a  while  that  he  cannot  simply  say,  ‘  This 
statement  is  true  because  it  is  in  the  Bible  ’  ; 
and  that  he  needs  a  more  solid  basis  for  his 
faith  than  the  Bible  taken  as  a  book  by 
itself  can  supply,  and  more  authoritative 
and  consistent  than  the  opinions  of  in¬ 
dividual  teachers.  I  would  say  to  such  an 
one  :  You  have  got  to  reconstruct  your 
spiritual  fabric  ;  you  have  got  to  use  all 
the  helps  you  can.  Amongst  these  is  the 
intellectual  material.  You  must  then  trust 
your  intellect ;  you  must  face  the  facts  ; 
you  must  try  your  best  to  use  your  mind. 


202  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

Moreover,  I  cannot  doubt  that  your  wisdom 
is  to  go  back  to  the  centre,  to  the  question 
of  Christ,  and,  letting  all  else  for  the  moment 
go,  ask  yourself  what  you,  with  your  own 
best  mind  and  judgement,  give  as  your 
answer  to  the  question — What  thinkest 
thou  of  Christ  ?  You  are  not  infallible. 
But,  in  the  state  in  which  you  are,  with  the 
conflicting  voices  around  you,  you  are 
responsible  for  using  your  own  mind  and 
taking  the  intellectual  trouble  necessary 
to  making  it  up.  So  many  young  English¬ 
men  simply  drift  away  from  faith  through 
laziness,  through  shrinking  from  doing 
their  intellectual  best.  They  do — what 
nothing  can  intellectually  justify  :  that 
is,  they  take  their  doubts  on  authority. 
They  doubt  because  other  people  doubt. 

But  intellectual  inquiry  is  not  all.  I 
have  known  many  who,  thank  God,  have 
come  back  out  of  mental  chaos  into 
clear  faith  ;  and  in  the  case  of  almost  no 
one  of  these  have  the  intellectual  con¬ 
siderations  been  finally  determining.  It 
has  been  love,  or  sorrow,  which  has  opened 
some  window  in  their  being  or  set  some 
spring  aflow.  Or  it  has  been  the  humilia¬ 
tion  of  a  moral  fall  which  has  brought  a 


THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE  203 

deeper  self-knowledge.  Or  it  has  been  the 
experience  of  what  they  needed  in  order 
to  help  others  that  has  brought  them  to 
know  their  own  need.  You  cannot  hurry 
these  experiences.  But  you  can  resolve 
not  to  be  a  hypocrite — never  to  let  your 
doubts  excuse  you  from  making  the  best 
practical  use  of  what  religious  conviction 
you  still  possess.  It  is  a  great  thing  to 
believe  in  God.  Do  not  delay  to  be  a 
devout  Theist  while  you  are  determining 
whether  you  can  be  a  good  Christian.  But 
also  keep  it  from  the  first  in  mind  that  it 
is  the  strength  and  not  the  weakness  of 
Christianity— it  is  the  divine  wisdom — 
which  from  the  first  has  made  it  assign  to 
knowledge  and  the  activity  of  the  intellect 
the  second  place  and  not  the  first,  which 
has  made  it  say  that  the  really  powerful 
thing  in  humanity  for  getting  at  religious 
truth  is  the  common  human  soul,  as  it  sets 
itself,  not  to  be  learned,  but  to  struggle, 
or  live,  or  love.  And  your  power  of  ap¬ 
preciating  Christianity,  with  the  apprecia¬ 
tion  which  is  necessary  for  intellectual 
sympathy,  will  depend  upon  the  depth  and 
reality  of  your  spiritual  experience,  will 
depend  upon  your  sense  of  sin  and  of  the 


204  THE  CREED  AND  COMMON  LIFE 

need  of  pardon,  your  fellowship  in  the 
desire  to  know  and  love  God  and  obtain 
purity  of  heart  and  divine  communion. 
Yes,  and  before  your  own  spiritual  ex¬ 
perience  is  deep  enough  to  be  conscious  of 
its  own  needs,  you  can  have  clearly  in  mind 
what  it  is  that  in  St.  Paul  and  St.  John  and 
in  millions  of  great  and  little  Christians 
since  then,  has  made  up  the  mind  and  heart 
of  Christendom  ;  what  it  is  that  has  given 
the  motive  to  its  faith  and  inspired  its  hope 
and  love  ;  and  you  can  realize  that  the  real 
strength  of  Christianity  lies  in  awaking 
and  satisfying  the  common  needs  of  simple 
people.  ‘  I  thank  Thee,  Father,  Lord  of 
heaven  and  earth,  that  thou  didst  hide 
these  things  from  the  wise  and  prudent,  and 
reveal  them  unto  babes.’ 


SERMON  II 

THE  PERMANENT  CREED  1 

Whosoever  goeth  onward,  and  abideth  not  in  the  teaching 
of  Christ,  hath  not  God  :  he  that  abideth  in  the  teaching, 
the  same  hath  both  the  Father  and  the  Son. — 2  St.  John  9. 

The  time  we  live  in  is  a  time  of  wide¬ 
spread  religious  unsettlement.  It  would, 
indeed,  be  hard  to  exaggerate  the  un¬ 
certainty  of  belief  in  many  classes  of 
society.  This  is  due  in  part  to  what  is  our 
weakness — that  the  faculty  of  criticism 
far  outruns  the  constructive  faculty  of  our 
minds  ;  and  that  in  a  period  of  diffused 
education  the  materials  of  criticism  are 
presented  to  all  kinds  of  minds,  and  are 
sufficient  to  overturn  positive  beliefs 
without  leading  on  to  any  reconstruction. 
But  it  is  also  due  to  what  is  a  legitimate 
matter  for  thankfulness — namely,  that 

1  A  sermon  preached  before  the  University  of  Oxford 
on  November  13,  1904,  and  previously  published.  It 
was  preached  and  published  some  years  before  the 
activity  of  the  New  Theology  began. 


205 


206 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED 


there  has  been  a  wide  extension  of 
scientific  and  historical  knowledge  ;  and 
this  widening  of  the  intellectual  horizon, 
with  the  accompanying  change  in  the 
methods  and  categories  of  men’s  thought, 
almost  necessarily  carries  with  it  religious 
unsettlement.  The  creed  that  had  associ¬ 
ated  itself  with  the  forms  of  thought  of  the 
seventeenth  or  eighteenth  centuries,  must 
have  a  difficulty  in  adjusting  itself  to  the 
history  and  science  of  the  nineteenth 
and  the  twentieth.  We  cannot  evade 
this  difficulty.  There  are,  indeed,  those 
who  think  the  only  proper  way  to  meet 
religious  unsettlement  and  scepticism  is 
to  hold  fast  by  religious  belief  as  we 
have  received  it  from  our  grandmother 
Lois  and  our  mother  Eunice,  without 
concessions  or  readaptations.  To  allow 
mistakes  in  the  common  teaching  of  the 
church  is  said  to  be  dangerous.  Conces¬ 
sion  is  regarded  as  only  the  first  step  to 
surrender,  and  parleying  is  only  the  pre¬ 
lude  to  treason.  But,  in  fact,  experience 
shows  us  in  the  past  that  religion  in  a 
settled  age  becomes  encrusted  with  ideas 
which  do  not  properly  belong  to  the  per¬ 
manent  creed,  but  to  the  thought  of  the 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED  20J 

time  ;  and  when  a  turn  of  the  wheel  of 
thought  takes  place,  those  ideas  associated 
with  the  essential  religion,  but  not  of  its 
essence,  have  finally  to  be  discarded,  that 
the  religion  may  exercise  its  true  strength 
once  more.  We  cannot  reasonably  deny 
that  permanent  religion  at  every  period  is 
associated  with  impermanent  elements,  the 
gold  with  the  dross,  and  we  must  have  the 
intellectual  courage  to  seek  to  dissociate 
the  two,  and  to  draw  distinctions  between 
essential  and  unessential,  and  to  make 
concessions,  and  to  seek  readjustment. 
On  the  other  hand  are  the  men  who  seem 
to  think  that  every  clever  new  criticism  is 
destined  to  triumph  over  an  established 
idea  ;  and  they  need  reminding  that  the 
conservative  tendencies  of  the  human  mind, 
and  the  recuperative  power  of  old  truth 
and  old  institutions,  have  disappointed 
revolutionists  at  every  period.  We  are 
not,  then,  to  refuse  to  reconsider,  and  to 
abandon  what  is  untenable,  and  to  readjust 
the  old  and  the  new,  any  more  than  we 
are  to  abandon  the  old  merely  because 
the  new  is  clamorously  asserting  itself. 
We  have  to  consider  frankly  and  estimate 
carefully.  The  question  is  a  real  and 


208  the  permanent  creed 

living  one  for  us.  Granted  that  in  current 
religion,  in  the  common  religious  tradition, 
there  are  permanent  and  impermanent 
elements,  there  are  essential  and  unessen¬ 
tial  factors,  how  are  we  to  distinguish  the 
one  from  the  other  ?  What  tests  have  we 
by  which  we  can  ascertain  what  is  the  real 
and  permanent  Christian  creed,  what  is 
really  revelation  of  God,  truth  permanent 
and  divine  ? 

Now,  the  test  which  is  practically  the 
most  convincing  is  also  the  least  producible 
in  argument  :  it  is  what  may  be  called  the 
mystical,  or  subjective,  test.  The  religious 
truth  that  we  hold  with  most  confidence 
for  permanent  and  divine  is  what,  in 
some  sense,  by  inner  spiritual  experience 
we  feel  we  know.  We  know  that  our 
conviction  of  right  and  wrong,  of  duty  to 
be  done  at  whatever  cost  of  pain  to  our¬ 
selves,  is  far  stronger  than  the  intellectual 
grounds  by  which  we  can  justify  it.  Or, 
again,  we  have  from  time  to  time  felt  the 
presence  of  God  in  response  to  prayer, 
or  in  blessing  upon  a  difficult  duty  loyally 
done,  or  in  time  of  sorrow  or  joy.  God  is, 
and  we  have  felt  Him.  We  know  that 
He  is  there,  though  all  the  proofs  are 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED  20g 

ineffectual  and  inadequate.  Or,  again,  the 
question  of  Christ’s  Godhead  is  for  me 
beyond  controversy.  ‘  No  man  can  say 
Jesus  is  Lord  but  by  the  Holy  Ghost’; 
but  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  movement 
of  the  divine  Spirit  in  the  soul  of  man. 
I  have  heard  Christ’s  words,  and  have  read 
of  His  deeds  in  the  Gospels,  and  my  whole 
soul  acknowledges  in  Him  perfect  God  in 
perfect  manhood.  I  have  felt  His  presence 
in  Holy  Communion.  I  know  He  died 
for  me.  He  has  forgiven  me.  I  am  His 
and  He  is  mine.  Argument  is  unsatisfying. 
But  I  know  by  a  conviction  inseparable 
from  my  own  personality  that  this  is  the 
Christ,  the  saviour  of  the  world  ;  and  that  in 
worshipping  Him  as  God  I  am  only  doing 
my  rational  duty  ;  and  that  He  is  with 
us  all  the  days,  even  unto  the  end  of  the 
world.  As  to  the  miracles,  I  can  see  in 
them  but  the  most  natural  actions,  or 
accompaniments,  of  His  person. 

This  is  personal  conviction.  It  is  some¬ 
thing  far  deeper  than  the  intellectual 
presentation  which  it  can  give  of  itself. 
It  is  deep  experience,  which  seems  to  render 
argument  needless.  And  we  may  truly 
say  that,  whatever  the  means  by  which 

14 


2  10 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED 


religious  belief  is  generated — whether  autho¬ 
rity,  or  evidence,  or  logical  reasoning — 
it  never  becomes  belief  worthy  of  the  name 
till  it  has  become  in  some  degree  experience, 
till  the  Spirit  of  God  has  wrought  it  into 
the  fibre  of  my  personal  consciousness, 
and  I  feel  and  know  that  He  is  God.  So 
far  as  we  have  really  believed  in  this  deep 
sense,  the  intellectual  evidence  for  our  faith 
is  rather  the  light  it  throws  on  the  whole 
of  life  and  the  whole  of  knowledge  than 
any  light  that  it  receives  from  other  fields 
of  experience  or  investigation.  It  con¬ 
vinces  more  and  more  by  giving  light, 
rather  than  is  proved  by  receiving  it. 

But  this  sort  of  inner  conviction  is  bound, 
if  not  for  its  own  sake,  then  for  that  of 
others,  to  give  a  reason  for  itself.  In  itself 
it  is  not  transmissible.  It  cannot  be  im¬ 
parted.  But  it  is  a  part  of  a  great  cor¬ 
porate  conviction  which  has  belonged  to  the 
whole  Christian  society,  and  it  must  strive 
to  give  itself  corporate  expression.  What 
is  it  convinces  me,  apart  from  my  own 
incommunicable  experience,  or  as  the  pre¬ 
lude  and  way  to  such  experience,  or  as  the 
result  of  it,  that  such  and  such  a  statement 
is  really  part  of  the  message  of  God  to  man  ? 


TIIE  PERMANENT  CREED 


21  I 


To  return  to  our  original  question — since 
so  many  things  have  been  taught  as  Chris¬ 
tian  truth,  and  afterwards  proved  false  or 
uncertain,  how  do  I  propose,  by  more  or 
less  objective  and  producible  tests,  to  dis¬ 
tinguish  essential  Christianity  from  the  vari¬ 
able  or  uncertain  or  false  accompaniments 
of  it  ? 


I 

The  first,  and  to  some  minds  the  most 
obvious,  test  is  that  of  authority  in  its 
broadest  sense.  There  has  been  a  common, 
a  universal,  faith  of  Christendom,  which 
has,  most  authoritatively,  expressed  itself 
in  the  catholic  creeds,  the  Apostles’  and 
the  Nicene  Creeds.  There  are,  indeed, 
features  in  the  common  faith,  such  as  the 
belief  in  the  atonement,  in  sacramental 
grace,  in  the  inspiration  of  Scripture,  which 
are  only  slightly  or  by  implication  touched 
on  in  these  formulas  of  faith  ;  but  at  least 
in  what  they  contain  they  represent  what 
has  been  universal  Christianity.  Hardly 
anything  has  been  nobly  or  effectively  done, 
or  bravely  suffered,  for  the  name  of  Christ, 
that  has  not  been  done  or  suffered  in  the 


212 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED 


profession  of  these  creeds,  or  the  profession 
of  the  faith  which  preceded  them.  The 
great  movement  of  humanity  which  gives 
glory  to  Christ  as  its  redeemer,  as  it 
traverses  the  ages  and  spreads  over  the 
world,  has  confessed  itself  in  these  terms 
almost  without  exception.  Since  the  Re¬ 
formation,  differences  have  sundered  the 
visible  Christian  society  into  fragments  ; 
emphasis  has  been  laid  on  one  point  in  this 
body  and  on  another  in  that  ;  but  Calvinist 
and  Lutheran,  Anglican,  Romanist,  Greek, 
and  Russian  have  confessed  the  same  faith 
in  the  Holy  Trinity,  one  God  ;  in  Christ, 
perfect  God  and  perfect  man  ;  in  His  birth 
of  a  virgin  and  life  and  death  for  man,  and 
His  resurrection  and  ascension ;  in  the 
descent  of  the  Spirit  and  the  formation  of 
the  church  ;  the  fellowship  of  the  saints  ; 
the  forgiveness  of  sins  ;  in  judgement  to 
come,  and  everlasting  life.  We  pass  back 
behind  the  Reformation  to  the  Middle 
Ages,  and  behind  the  Middle  Ages  to  the 
centuries  of  the  Councils,  and  back  to  the 
earlier  Fathers  ;  we  note  the  differences  of 
Alexandria  and  Antioch  and  Rome  and 
Africa  ;  but  they  do  not  touch  this  com¬ 
mon  Creed.  Even  separated  heretical 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED  213 

bodies,  like  the  Nestorians,  seem,  so  far  as 
the  bulk  of  them  is  concerned,  to  have  been 
separated,  not  from  the  faith,  but,  by  an 
accident  of  mismanaged  controversy,  from  a 
misunderstood  term  of  theology.  And  the 
great  Creed  finds  its  justification  in  the 
theology  of  the  Epistles  and  its  verification 
in  the  words  and  deeds  of  Christ  in  the 
Gospels.  Criticism  loves  to  dwell  on  differ¬ 
ences  ;  but  the  real  unity  is  unmistakable. 
And  it  is  a  mistake,  surely,  if  we  never  let 
this  broad  and  massive  unity  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  faith  make  its  proper  impression  upon 
us.  The  modern  student,  in  his  desire  to 
dive  below  the  surface,  or  in  his  passion  for 
original  work,  may  bury  himself  prema¬ 
turely  in  some  forgotten  corner  of  church 
history,  some  study  of  apocryphal  Acts  or 
anonymous  and  unpublished  documents. 
Let  him  first  tread  the  broad  highway. 
Let  him  read  the  main  texts  first  of  all, 
as  they  can  be  read  in  mass  and  with 
rapidity,  that  the  great  general  impression 
may  be  made  upon  him.  There  is,  after  all, 
a  faith  which  has  been  held  semper,  ubique, 
ab  omnibus ,  in  such  sense  that  what  frag¬ 
ments  of  the  Christian  body  have  not  held 
it  hardly  count  in  the  total  effect.  What 


214  THE  PERMANENT  creed 

records  we  have  of  human  life  redeemed  and 
consecrated  show  it  redeemed  and  con¬ 
secrated  in  the  profession  of  this  faith  ;  and 
what  lies  outside  this  profession  can  be 
left  out  of  reckoning,  without  the  general 
effect  being  altered,  or  the  result  for  human 
life  appreciably  affected.  And  this  im¬ 
pression  of  unity  through  all  differences, 
and  permeating  all  divisions,  is  impressive 
in  a  very  high  degree.  It  generates  in  the 
mind  a  sense  of  indissoluble  coherence — a 
feeling  that  this  creed  and  Christianity  are 
one  and  the  same  thing ;  or  that  they 
stand  to  one  another  as  root  and  fruit. 
There  may  be  great  differences  between 
the  Christian  beliefs  of  the  twentieth, 
and  the  tenth,  and  the  fourth,  and  the 
second  century,  but  the  differences  will 
not  touch  the  great  central  body  of  faith. 

II 

But  this  brings  us  to  the  second  test. 
This  Creed  professes  to  be  based  simply 
upon  a  revelation  given,  or  given  in  its 
final  form,  through  an  historical  person, 
Jesus  Christ.  It  is  a  Creed  based  on  facts, 
which  are  confessedly  unique  and,  in  part, 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED  215 

miraculous.  As  thus  claiming  an  historical 
basis,  it  enters  the  region  of  historical 
criticism.  It  has  always  from  the  first 
taken  its  stand  on  testimony.  And  testi¬ 
mony  must  stand  criticism.  Moreover,  for 
us  to-day  there  is  no  testimony  worth  con¬ 
sidering  which  is  not  in  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment.  I  say  that  it  is  impossible  in  any 
way  to  withdraw  the  historical  basis  of 
Christianity  from  the  freest  and  frankest 
criticism.  If  there  exist  persons  who  say, 
Let  the  Old  Testament  be  frankly  criti¬ 
cized,  for  it  is  not  so  important,  but  not  the 
New  Testament,  for  it  is  vital ;  the  claim 
must  be  utterly  repudiated.  In  proportion 
to  the  important  issues  which  hang  upon 
the  New  Testament  records,  must  be  the 
frankness  of  the  criticism  to  which  they 
are  subjected.  And  the  Creed  has  no  other 
line  of  defence  behind  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  documents.  It  is  sometimes  sug¬ 
gested  that  we  can  hold  that  destructive 
criticism  has  done  its  work  successfully 
upon  the  Gospels,  but  can  still  go  on  pro¬ 
claiming  our  faith  in  Christ  born  of  a 
virgin  and  risen  from  the  dead,  in  Christ 
as  God  in  manhood,  on  the  authority  of  the 
church.  I  am  sure  this  is  not  the  case. 


2l6  the  permanent  creed 

The  authority  of  the  church  has  always 
professed  to  rest  on  the  authority  of  the 
apostles.  It  is  rooted  and  based  on  their 
witness — their  eye-witness.  And  the  con¬ 
tent  of  the  apostolic  witness  ‘  as  they  de¬ 
livered  it  unto  us  which  from  the  beginning 
were  eye-witnesses  and  ministers  of  the 
Word/  is  to  be  found  in  its  most  authentic 
form  in  the  Gospels,  and  a  few  other  his¬ 
torical  passages  of  the  New  Testament. 
It  is  very  difficult  to  conceive  any  critical 
scholar  supposing  that,  if  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment  narratives  are  not  sufficient  to  war¬ 
rant  us  in  believing  that  Jesus  Christ  was 
really  born  of  a  virgin,  and  really  fed  the 
five  thousand  with  the  five  loaves,  and  was 
really  raised  from  the  dead  the  third  day, 
there  is  any  other  witness  which  can  support 
the  statements,  considered  as  records  of 
actual  events.  Thus,  as  between  M.  Loisy 
and  Professor  Harnack,  I  cannot  doubt 
that,  if  the  critical  results  in  which  they 
substantially  agree  are  accepted  as  scien¬ 
tific,  we  must  go  with  Harnack  and  not 
with  Loisy  in  our  attitude  towards  the 
Creed. 

Once  again,  the  theology  of  the  creed 
of  Nicaea  is  only  the  making  more  explicit 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED  2IJ 

what  is  already  present  in  the  theology  of 
St.  Paul  and  St.  John.  But  I  cannot  be¬ 
lieve  that  the  theology  of  St.  Paul  and 
St.  John  could  rank  as  more  than  a  phase  in 
the  history  of  thought,  if  it  were  found  that 
Christ  Himself,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  made 
no  such  divine  claim  as,  in  different  de¬ 
grees,  but  with  equal  certainty,  the  Gospels 
record  Him  to  have  made.  Thus  we  can¬ 
not  refuse  to  enter  the  region  of  free 
criticism  with  our  Gospels  ;  nor  can  we 
pretend  that  the  validity  of  our  creeds  is 
independent  of  the  issue  of  such  criticism. 
If  the  creeds  stand,  with  their  historical 
and  doctrinal  statements,  it  must  be  be¬ 
cause  the  Gospels  stand.  I  do  not  want 
a  complete  absence  of  inaccuracy  or  dis¬ 
crepancy  in  the  Gospel  narratives.  I  want 
only,  if  I  am  to  believe  the  creeds,  that  the 
Gospels  should  stand  as,  in  the  fullest 
sense,  trustworthy  history. 

Well,  now,  it  is  my  conviction  that  no 
fair  historical  criticism  can  dissolve  the  force 
of  the  historical  evidence  we  have  to  such 
propositions  as  the  following  :  that  Jesus 
Christ  was,  and  knew  Himself  to  be,  sinless 
in  the  midst  of  a  sinful  world  of  which  He 
came  to  be  the  saviour  ;  that,  moreover, 


218  the  permanent  creed 

He  encouraged  in  His  disciples  towards 
Himself,  and  claimed  from  them,  the  sort  of 
allegiance  and  faith  which  only  God  can 
rightly  claim,  and  which  can  only  be  ren¬ 
dered  without  impiety  to  God  ;  that  He 
worked  miracles  which  no  reasoning  can 
allow  us  to  ascribe  to  anything  else  than  the 
creative  power  of  God  working  with  Him 
to  authorize  His  teaching  ;  that  after  His 
death  and  burial  His  tomb  was  found 
empty  on  the  third  (or,  as  we  should  say, 
the  second)  day,  and  His  disciples  were 
raised  from  despondency  and  despair  to  a 
sure  faith  and  confident  hope  by  repeated 
manifestations  of  Himself  risen,  in  a  body 
transformed  and  spiritualized,  but  the  same. 
I  am  quite  sure  that  it  is  those  who  dis¬ 
believe  such  propositions,  and  not  those 
who  believe  them,  who  do  violence  to  the 
evidence.  Further,  though  the  manner  of 
our  Lord’s  birth  falls  outside  the  period  of 
His  life  of  which  the  apostles  were  personal 
witnesses,  and  was  not,  therefore,  among 
the  grounds  on  which  belief  in  Christ  was 
asked  ;  yet  I  see  the  best  reasons  for  think¬ 
ing  that  in  the  early  circle  of  believers  the 
fact  of  our  Lord’s  birth  of  a  virgin  was 
believed  on  the  evidence  of  the  only  first- 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED  2IQ 

hand  witnesses,  J  oseph  and  Mary,  and  that 
it  is  Joseph  and  Mary  whose  testimony  is 
embodied  in  the  first  and  third  Gospels. 
I  believe,  therefore,  that  the  faith  of  the 
Creed  is  supported  by  free  inquiry  into  his¬ 
torical  facts.  And  if  I  am  asked  how  it 
is  that  ‘  the  critics  ’  reach  a  conclusion  so 
different,  I  reply  :  At  least  in  England,  the 
strength  of  criticism — its  strength  in  bulk 
and  intellectual  value — is  on  the  conserva¬ 
tive  side.  Also,  I  reply,  that  in  the  great 
majority  of  cases  I  seem  to  see  most  clearly 
that  the  destructive  critics  reach  the  results 
they  reach,  not  from  considerations  pro¬ 
perly  historical,  but  because  their  mind  is 
occupied  with  a  certain  view  of  the  world 
which  indisposes  them  to  the  conclusions 
of  the  Creed  ;  just  as,  on  the  other  hand, 
I  am  conscious  that  my  own  mind  is  filled 
with,  a  certain  belief  in  God,  a  certain  view 
of  sin,  a  certain  expectation  of  divine  re¬ 
demption,  which  makes  the  evidence  of 
the  Gospels  acceptable,  which  makes  me 
susceptible  of  belief.  I  seem  to  see  clearly 
enough  that  historical  criticism,  as  applied 
to  the  Gospels,  can  take  us  a  certain  way 
without  appealing  to  any  presuppositions 
except  what  are  shared  by  almost  all 


2  20 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED 


sensible  men  :  as  that  the  matter  of  the 
Synoptic  Gospels  dates  almost  entirely  back 
behind  the  destruction  of  J erusalem ;  or 
that  when  St.  Paul  wrote  his  First  Epistle 
to  the  Corinthians  (a.d.  55),  and,  after  re¬ 
minding  them  in  detail  of  his  original 
teaching  as  to  the  resurrection  of  Jesus 
Christ,  speaks  of  his  own  relation  to  the 
older  apostles,  and  says,  ‘  Wherefore, 
whether  it  were  I  or  they,  so  we  preach 
and  so  ye  believed/  he  could  not  have  been 
conscious  of  any  difference  between  his 
witness  and  theirs.  I  think,  then,  that  we 
might  very  well  reach  almost  universal 
agreement  that  the  witness  of  the  New 
Testament  can  be  shown  to  have  taken 
shape  so  early  that  it  may  be  strictly  his¬ 
torical — that  it  falls  within  the  conditions 
which  admit  of  good  history.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  remain  discrepancies,  obscuri¬ 
ties,  difficulties  ;  there  remain  the  large 
gaps  in  the  evidence,  and  the  historical 
possibility  that  conjectures  or  mistakes 
might  very  rapidly  have  become  imaginary 
memories.  Thus  it  seems  as  if  the  question 
whether  these  recorded  events  actually 
happened,  miraculous  and  supernatural  as 
they  are,  will  almost  always  be  answered 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED 


221 


in  accordance  with  what  a  man’s  mind  is 
as  to  the  probabilities  of  divine  action — 
in  accordance  with  what  he  thinks  is  really 
credible  or  probable.  We  must  all  train 
ourselves  in  the  very  rare  quality  of  sub¬ 
mission  to  good  evidence,  when  it  runs  con¬ 
trary  to  our  prejudices  at  any  point.  This 
quality  is  as  rare  among  biblical  critics  as 
among  men  of  the  world  ;  and  as  rare 
among  sceptics  as  among  believers.  To 
train  ourselves  in  it  is  a  high  intellectual 
duty.  But  at  the  end  we  are  left  acknow¬ 
ledging  that  a  man’s  judgement,  on  the 
weight  to  be  assigned  to  historical  testi¬ 
mony,  will  be  found  in  part  depending  on 
his  general  view  of  what  is  probable  in  this 
world,  as  he  knows  it. 

Ill 

And  this  brings  me  to  my  third  test — the 
rational  or  logical — by  which  I  would  try 
to  distinguish  the  essential  or  permanent 
from  the  unessential  or  impermanent  ele¬ 
ments  in  Christianity.  It  is  the  test  of 
rational  coherence. 

There  is  a  certain  set  of  ideas,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  which  naturally  arise  on  the  con¬ 
sideration  of  the  Christian  religion  in  a 


222 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED 


mind  which  views  the  world  mainly  under 
the  modern  category  of  development, 
which,  however,  has  its  ancient  analogies. 
Humanity  is  thought  of  as  in  gradual 
progress  of  upward  development  from  the 
brute.  Sin  broadly  appears  as  the  remains 
of  the  tiger  and  the  ape-nature  in  us, 
which  is  gradually  being  outgrown  ;  or, 
where  it  is  admitted  to  be  more  than  that, 
as  the  mistake  or  fault  of  the  individual 
choosing  the  lower  instead  of  the  higher, 
which  is  the  fault  of  his  own  will  only, 
and  does  not  involve  the  race  as  a  whole. 
In  this  process  of  upward  movement,  viewed 
spiritually,  Christ  is  the  highest  point. 
The  language  of  incarnation  may  be  ac¬ 
cepted.  He  may  be  declared  Son  of  God, 
or  the  phrase  f  God  in  man  ’  may  be  used  ; 
but  the  idea  is  that  humanity  is  God’s  son, 
that  God  is,  so  to  speak,  incarnate  or 
becoming  incarnate  in  humanity,  and  that 
Christ  is  in  the  highest  degree  what  every 
man  is  in  a  measure  because  he  has  the 
Word  and  Spirit  of  God  in  him.  Now, 
Christ’s  sinlessness,  in  an  absolute  sense,  is 
an  encumbrance  to  this  view.  The  virgin 
birth  is  an  offence.  Miracles,  as  a  whole, 
including  the  physical  resurrection,  are  an 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED  223 

encumbrance.  What  is  wanted  is  a  more 
or  less  comprehensive  view  of  a  develop¬ 
ment  in  which  the  divine  sonship  of  man 
is  the  climax,  and  J esus  Christ  is  the  highest 
specimen.  This  view  is  represented  con¬ 
sistently  in  many  German  and  English 
Unitarian  Theists.  In  ancient  language, 
we  should  describe  it  as  a  Pelagian  view 
of  man  associated  with  a  Nestorian  view  of 
Christ,  and  leading  to  a  Sabellian  doctrine 
of  God.  The  cohesion  of  these  ideas  was 
recognized  in  early  times,  and  it  is  recog¬ 
nizable  enough  in  our  day  in  modern  forms. 

Now,  this  sequence  of  ideas  may  be  very 
strongly  criticized  in  itself.  The  idea  of 
sin  as  something  which  in  the  process  of 
civilization  we  show  a  tendency  to  outgrow, 
is  quite  contrary  to  experience.  The  evi¬ 
dence  of  the  Gospels,  too  deeply  engraved 
into  the  record  to  admit  of  dislodgement, 
postulates  in  Christ  both  a  sinlessness  and 
a  personal  claim  which  force  us  to  recognize 
in  Him  something  much  more  than  this 
highest  development  of  our  existing  man¬ 
hood.  The  historical  witness  to  the 
miracles,  and  pre-eminently  to  the  physical 
resurrection,  is  overwhelming.  But  I  am 
concerned  now  not  to  combat  this  set  of 


224  the  permanent  creed 

ideas,  but  to  confront  them  with  another 
which,  starting  from  the  same  fundamental 
conception  of  God  and  man,1  is  distinguished 
first  of  all  by  the  severer  view  of  sin.  This 
is  the  Bible  view.  Sin  is  so  deep  a  taint, 
so  profound  an  evil,  and  so  ingrained  into 
the  whole  stock  of  our  humanity,  that  we 
cry  out — and  the  best  specimens  of  our 
common  manhood  most  strenuously — for 
something  more  than  progress — for  re¬ 
demption — for  a  new  birth  :  that  is,  a  new 
creative  act  which  shall  give  our  nature  a 
fresh  start.  This  profound  sense  of  sin 
and  need  gives  a  welcome  to  the  Catholic 
and  New  Testament  doctrine  of  a  divine 
act  of  redemption,  led  up  to,  indeed,  in 
the  course  of  history,  and  prepared  for  by 
the  anticipations  of  prophecy,  but  in  itself 
single  and  unique  ;  an  absolute  act  of  God, 
by  which  the  Son  of  God,  the  eternal  Son 
of  the  Father,  for  us  men  and  for  our 
salvation,  came  down  from  heaven,  and 
was  incarnate  and  was  made  man.  This 
is  a  phrase  which  could  not  possibly  be 

1  This  was  written  before  the  conception  of  the  divine 
immanence  (in  the  exclusive  sense)  and  the  substantial 
identity  of  Godhead  and  manhood,  had  become  pro¬ 
minent. 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED 


225 


applied  to  any  other  event  than  one — the 
one  incarnation,  or  to  any  other  person 
than  one — Jesus  Christ,  believed  to  be 
personally  God  in  manhood.  This  new 
creative  act  of  God  brings  into  the  world 
a  new  manhood — perfectly  human,  but 
free  from  all  the  taint  and  weakness  of 
sin  ;  and  the  startling  distinction  between 
Jesus  Christ’s  conscious  sinlessness  and 
the  consciousness  of  other  prophets  and 
saints  suggests  so  manifest  a  moral  miracle, 
as  makes  the  idea  of  the  physical  miracle 
which  accompanied  His  birth  intellectually 
welcome  and  congruous  ;  while  it  leads  on 
naturally  to  a  human  life  such  as  the  Gospels 
describe. 

But  the  divine  Incarnation  is  the  con¬ 
summation  of  our  human  nature  in  union 
with  God,  as  well  as  its  redemption.  In 
Christ  our  manhood  is  taken  into  God.  He 
is  God  in  manhood.  This  both  puts  Christ 
in  a  quite  unique  relation  to  all  other  men, 
so  that  He  can  become  in  a  complete  sense 
the  head  and  fount  of  a  new  manhood  by 
spiritual  regeneration ;  and  also  gives 
a  reason  of  the  most  weighty  kind  for 
His  miracles  and  the  resurrection.  His 
miracles  are  not  portents  ;  they  are  the 

15 


226 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED 


physical  counterparts  of  His  moral  teaching 
and  claim.  They  are  the  evidences  such 
as  we  feel  in  our  deepest  moments  we 
rationally  need,  that  there  is  only  one 
lordship  in  the  universe,  and  that  the 
material  world,  which  commonly  seems  so 
indifferent  to  moral  distinctions,  ultimately 
and  at  the  bottom  is  only  the  instrument 
of  the  moral  will  of  God.  This  is  made 
manifest  by  the  miracles  and  the  resur¬ 
rection  of  Christ  as  it  could  be  in  no  other 
way.  Christ  presents  to  us  in  summary 
an  anticipation  of  the  final  victory  of  spirit 
in  matter  ;  and  assures  us  of  the  glorious 
future,  which,  through  all  failure  and 
disaster,  awaits  the  manhood  which  holds 
fast  by  God.  Meanwhile  the  whole  relation 
of  the  Son  to  the  Father  revealed  in  the 
incarnation,  and  of  the  Spirit  to  both, 
establishes  the  idea  of  the  Trinity  which 
offers  its  profound  solution  of  the  ultimate 
difficulties  of  divine  personality  by  dis¬ 
closing  to  us  a  social  nature  in  the  depth 
of  the  one  divine  being. 

All  this  is  obvious.  It  means  only  that 
the  whole  set  of  ideas  about  sin  and  re¬ 
demption  and  the  Incarnation  and  the 
Trinity,  which  belong  to  the  catholic  creeds, 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED  22/ 

and  are  the  commonplaces  of  historical 
Christianity,  cohere  and  are  practically 
indissoluble.  It  suggests,  what  I  am  sure 
is  true,  that  to  abandon  our  maintenance 
of  miracles  as  an  integral  part  of  our  creed  ; 
or  in  particular  of  one  miracle,  the 
Lord’s  birth  of  a  virgin — as  if  the  rest  of 
the  fabric  would  be  unimpaired — is  simply 
due  to  lack  of  perception.  In  fact,  the 
writers  who  ask  for  the  particular  surrender 
make  it  manifest  enough,  if  their  thought 
is  scrutinized,  that  what  they  are  asking 
for  is  something  much  more  than  a  single 
surrender  ;  it  is  the  substitution  of  one 
whole  set  of  ideas  for  another.  And  if  we 
examine  wherein  lies  the  secret  of  the 
difference  between  the  Catholic  and  the 
Unitarian  set  of  ideas,  we  shall  find  it,  I 
am  persuaded,  not  so  much  in  any  view 
of  historical  evidence,  as  in  the  different 
views  of  what  sin  is  and  what  it  needs. 
The  deeper,  severer,  view  of  sin  is  the  clue 
to  the  whole  Catholic  sequence  of  ideals. 
And  what  a  man  thinks  about  sin  is  very 
largely  a  matter  of  his  own  personal  moral 
consciousness. 

I  repeat  :  in  current  controversies  as  to 
what  Christian  belief  does  or  does  not 


228  THE  PERMANENT  CREED 

necessarily  involve,  the  language  used  by 
different  sides  is,  on  the  surface,  largely 
identical ;  but  what  we  are  really  concerned 
with  is  a  conflict  between  two  funda¬ 
mentally  different  cycles  of  ideas. 

I  have  tried  to  face  the  question  :  In 
an  age  of  change  and  criticism  and  new 
knowledge,  what  are  we  to  regard  as 
permanent  Christianity  ?  what  are  we  to 
regard  as  the  permanent  faith  for  which 
we  are  to  contend  to  death — any  ‘  advance  ’ 
out  of  which,  to  use  St.  John’s  phrase,  is 
only  advance  along  a  road  which  separates 
from  God  and  Christ  ?  I  reply,  first  of 
all,  the  faith  summarized  and  expressed 
in  the  catholic  creeds — that  faith  in  God 
and  man,  and  man’s  destiny ;  in  the 
incarnation  and  the  person  of  Christ  and 
the  accompanying  miracles,  and  the  eternal 
triune  being  of  God  disclosed  in  Christ’s 
revelation.  Beyond  that,  I  am  not  now 
inquiring  whether  there  be  anything  more 
of  equal  value.  But  that  first  of  all,  and 
every  part  of  it.  And  my  reason  is,  because 
in  a  remarkable  manner  it  obeys  all  those 
three  tests  which  I  may  restate  in  a  different 
order.  First,  that  this  whole  faith  is 


THE  PERMANENT  CREED  229 

historically  identified  in  all  its  parts  with 
historical  Christianity.  It  comes  to  us 
with  the  whole  weight  of  Christian 
authority.  Secondly ,  this  is  not  bare 
authority.  We  discover  in  the  articles 
thus  proposed  by  authority  a  most  con¬ 
vincing  sequence  of  ideas.  It  is  not  a 
number  of  isolated  dogmas,  but  one  view, 
coherent  and  indissoluble.  Thirdly,  when 
we  approach  the  historical  evidence  we  find 
it  (at  the  points  material  to  our  present 
inquiry)  cogent  in  a  high  degree.  It  sup¬ 
ports  and  justifies  our  belief  that  the  facts 
on  which  our  faith  rests  really  occurred. 
And  if  the  mind  is  already  furnished  with 
the  ideas  which  render  it  susceptible  of 
the  evidence,  or,  to  put  it  in  other  words, 
if  it  is  free  from  the  hostile  prejudices 
which  belong  to  another  set  of  ideas,  it 
will  not  fail  to  find  the  evidence  con¬ 
vincing. 

I  have  ventured  to  suggest  the  considera¬ 
tion  and  application  of  this  threefold  test, 
because  I  feel  that  our  scholars  are  mostly 
applying  the  test  of  criticism,  as  if  really 
historical  criticism  were,  what  it  is  not,  an 
abstract  instrument  which  could  be  de¬ 
tached  from  the  general  furniture  of  the 


230  THE  PERMANENT  CREED 

mind.  It  is  possible  that  the  intellect  of 
the  schools  in  our  own  age  may  become 
so  merely  critical  as  to  make  it  highly  diffi¬ 
cult  for  the  professed  student  to  be  a 
believer.  The  remedy  for  this  lies,  surety, 
in  the  deliberate  restoration  of  other  modes 
of  approach  to  Christian  truth.  If  the 
educated  intellect  becomes  purely  critical, 
we  may  feel  sure  that  whatever  restoration 
or  revival  of  religion  is  to  be  expected  in 
the  future,  will  have  to  arise  out  of  another 
kind  of  soil — out  of  something  more  broadly 
human,  more  spiritually  profound  ;  in  a 
word,  more  sympathetic  with  Christ’s 
own  mind. 


SERMON  III 

THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  1 

Repent  ye  :  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand. — 
St.  Matt.  iii.  2. 

It  is  my  persuasion,  which  deepens  with 
every  year  of  experience,  that  there  will 
be  no  revival  of  vital  religion  among  us,  on 
any  large  scale,  or  with  any  adequate 
results,  except  through  a  deepening  of  the 
sense  of  sin  :  a  return  to  the  properly 
Christian  severity  of  view  about  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  sin  and  its  consequences  ;  and  that 
this  is  needed  equally  in  all  classes  of 
society  and  among  all  kinds  of  men.  There 
is,  in  the  Old  Testament,  a  narrative  of  the 
way  in  which  the  foolish  king,  Jehoiakim, 
and  his  courtiers,  received  the  solemn 
warnings  of  Jeremiah,  as  Jehudi  read  them 
from  the  roll  of  the  book  in  which  Jeremiah 
had  caused  Baruch  to  write  them.2  ‘  And 

1  A  sermon  preached  before  the  University  of  Oxford 
on  December  13,  1903,  and  previously  published. 

2  Jer.  xxxvi.  21  ff. 


231 


232  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

Jehudi  read  it  in  the  ears  of  the  king,  and 
in  the  ears  of  all  the  princes  which  stood 
beside  the  king.  Now  the  king  sat  in  the 
winter-house  .  .  .  and  there  was  a  fire  in 
the  brazier  burning  before  him.  And  it 
came  to  pass,  when  Jehudi  had  read  three 
or  four  leaves,  that  the  king  cut  it  with  the 
pen-knife  and  cast  it  into  the  fire  that  was 
in  the  brazier,  until  all  the  roll  was  con¬ 
sumed  in  the  fire  that  was  in  the  brazier. 
And  they  were  not  afraid,  nor  rent  their 
garments,  neither  the  king  nor  any  of  his 
servants  that  heard  all  these  words.'  ‘  They 
were  not  afraid  '  of  the  warnings  of  the 
word  of  God  on  sin.  That  seems  to 
describe  the  attitude  of  all  classes  (I  do 
not  say,  by  any  means,  of  all  individuals) 
of  our  society  to-day.  The  horror  of  sin 
and  the  terror  of  its  consequences  have 
come  to  be  regarded  as  somewhat  old- 
fashioned.  But  this  false  fearlessness  of 
the  king  Jehoiakim  was  the  ruin  of  himself 
and  his  country.  If  there  is  any  truth  in 
the  Bible,  it  is  this  :  that  sin  is  not  a  stage 
in  upward  evolution,  a  mere  survival  of 
animal  tendencies  which  is  gradually  being 
outgrown  ;  nor  a  mere  result  of  untoward 
circumstances,  or  lack  of  education  or 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  233 

experience  ;  but  a  lawlessness  of  the  human 
will,  a  perpetually  renewed  rebellion  against 
God  or  neglect  of  God,  which  disorders 
human  nature  by  depriving  it  of  the  fellow¬ 
ship  of  God,  and  ruins  both  the  individual 
and  the  social  life,  except  so  far  as  repent¬ 
ance  leads  towards  amendment,  and  opens 
the  way  for  that  divine  redemption  which 
God’s  love  is  ever  offering. 

It  is  quite  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  this 
teaching  about  sin  is  dependent  upon  our 
regarding  the  story  of  the  Fall,  in  Genesis 
iii.,  as  historical.  If  the  materials  of  that 
story  are  derived  from  popular  legends, 
common  to  the  Israelites  and  the  Baby¬ 
lonians,  they  have  been  used  by  a  truly 
inspired  mind,  and  been  turned  into  an 
everlastingly  true  parable  of  what  tempta¬ 
tion  and  sin  really  are.  ‘Moreover,  that 
story  has  strangely  little  appreciable  effect 
on  the  rest  of  the  Old  Testament.  The 
Old  Testament  view  of  sin  is  simply  the 
result  of  the  moral  teaching  about  the 
character  of  God  and  the  nature  of  man 
which  constitutes  the  central  feature  of 
the  Old  Testament  revelation.  In  the  Old 
Testament,  indeed,  the  view  of  sin  and  its 
consequences  is  mainly  confined  to  this 


234  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

life.  Sin  is  ruin,  here  and  now,  to  the 
individual  and  the  State.  It  is  social  ruin. 
That  is  permanently  true.  Professor  Hux¬ 
ley  speaks  of  ‘  that  fixed  order  of  nature 
which  sends  social  disorganization  upon  the 
track  of  immorality,  as  surely  as  it  sends 
physical  disease  after  physical  trespasses,’ 
and  he  speaks  of  its  being  ‘  the  high  mission  9 
of  science  ‘  to  be  the  priestess  of  a  firm  and 
lively  faith  ’  in  that  fixed  moral  order.1 
Substitute  for  the  words  ‘  fixed  order  ’ 
some  such  phrase  as  ‘  the  will  of  God  in 
the  government  of  the  world,’  and  }Tou 
have  the  teaching  of  the  prophets  about 
the  ‘  day  of  the  Lord  ’ — the  judgement  of 
God  upon  nations.  That  is  permanently 
true  teaching.  It  admits  of  no  advance. 
It  is  given  practically  in  its  final  form  in 
the  Old  Testament  prophets.  It  simply 
passes  over  from  the  Old  Testament  into 
the  New,  and  receives  its  reaffirmation 
through  the  lips  of  Christ.  And  it  is 
verified,  if  we  look  below  the  surface,  in 
the  history  of  the  falls  of  nations  and 
governing  classes. 

But  as  to  the  consequences  of  sin  to  the 

1  T.  H.  Huxley's  Evolution  and  Ethics  (Macmillan, 
1903),  p.  146. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  235 

individual,  the  Old  Testament  teaching  was 
much  more  imperfect.  ‘  The  soul  that 
sinneth  it  shall  die/  meant  at  first  that 
God’s  judgements  on  individuals  accom¬ 
plish  themselves  in  this  world.  Sin  is 
punished  by  misfortune  and  death.  Moral 
experience  broke  down  this  simple  faith 
and  forced  the  conscience  of  man  forward 
to  see,  in  a  wider  area,  and  a  course  ex¬ 
tending  out  beyond  the  limits  of  this  life, 
the  fulfilment  of  the  dealings  of  God  with 
the  human  soul.  But  the  Christ,  when  He 
came,  with  His  full  disclosure  of  divine 
love  and  human  destiny,  did  not  mitigate, 
nay,  rather  He  intensified,  the  severity  of 
Old  Testament  teaching  about  the  con¬ 
sequences  of  sin  to  the  individual  soul. 
He  would  have  men  still  tremble — till 
perfect  love  should  cast  out  fear — under 
the  terror  of  the  wrrath  of  God,  ‘Yea,  I 
say  unto  }Tou,  fear  him.’  So  long  as  the 
fear  of  temporal  disaster  in  this  world  is 
an  inevitable  element  in  human  nature, 
an  inevitable  stimulus  to  avoid  the  disaster 
that  threatens,  I  cannot  conceive  why  men 
should  endeavour  to  eliminate  from  our 
ordinary  human  motives  the  fear  of  eternal 
ruin.  We  may,  indeed,  regard  hell  as 


236  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

nothing  else  but  the  inevitable  outcome,  in 
another  world  than  this,  of  the  process  by 
which,  in  this  world,  we  have  formed  for 
ourselves  a  character  incompatible  with 
God.  We  may  rid  the  doctrine  of  any 
inequitable  associations.  We  may  recog¬ 
nize  to  the  full  the  compassion  of  God,  the 
love  which  binds  Him  to  do  the  utmost 
possible  for  every  human  soul  which  He 
has  created,  and  to  be  equitable  with  a 
father’s  equity,  in  taking  into  account 
ignorance,  or  hard  circumstances,  or  lack 
of  opportunity.  But  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  self-willed  independence  of  God ;  as 
lust  which  will  not  be  controlled ;  as 
avarice  or  ambition  which  will  not  brook 
restraints  ;  as  malice  which  will  not  forgive. 
There  is  the  possibility  that  men  may — nay, 
there  is  the  experience  that  men  do — 
harden  themselves  in  persistent  habit, 
passing  into  indelible  character,  into  a  moral 
state  incompatible  with  the  fellowship  of 
God.  Death  does  not  change  us.  It  only 
strips  us  bare,  and  transplants  into  a  world 
where  only  God  is,  and  His  judgements  : 
and  the  man  there  reaps  the  consequences 
of  what,  in  defiance  or  neglect  of  God,  he 
has  become.  If  men  are  to  be  dealt  with 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  237 

in  accordance  with  moral  laws,  God  Himself 
cannot  alter  those  consequences.  And, 
unless  we  are  prepared  to  play  fast  and 
loose  with  language,  we  must  admit  that 
those  consequences,  according  to  the  teach¬ 
ing  of  the  New  Testament,  may  have 
become  final  and  irreversible — an  eternal 
sin — an  eternal  perishing,  a  state  of  being 
finally  outcast  and  of  knowing  it,  which  is 
the  weeping  and  gnashing  of  teeth.  It  is 
because  the  New  Testament  takes  this 
tremendous  view  of  sin,  and  treats  it  as  a 
universal  fact  in  human  nature,  that  its 
whole  teaching  about  man  treats  him  as 
being  the  subject  of  redemption— as  needing 
in  each  individual  case  to  be  bought  back 
out  of  a  slavery  in  which  he  lies. 

The  divine  method  of  this  redemption 
is,  so  to  speak,  from  within  the  human  race 
itself.  It  is  a  new  creative  act  of  God 
restoring  in  human  nature  a  moral  creation 
which  had  been  ruined.  The  Saviour  is 
man,  but  new  man  ;  born,  but  virgin-born. 
He  moves  out  into  experience  and  history 
as  ‘  in  all  points  *  tried  as  we  other  men, 
his  brethren,  are,  but  with  one  significant 
exception — He  knew  no  sin.  He  was  with¬ 
out  sin  in  Himself.  He  set  the  pattern  of 


23S  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

our  manhood,  not  as  we  have  made  it,  but 
as  God  would  have  it  be,  and  will  (if  we  will 
let  Him)  remake  it.  The  sin  which  was 
in  the  world  marked  the  Saviour’s  steps 
with  blood  and  nailed  Him  to  the  cross. 
But  His  willing  obedience,  unto  death — the 
willingness  of  a  manhood  wholly  in  con¬ 
formity  with  God — turns  the  death  which 
a  God-refusing  world  recklessly  inflicted, 
into  a  perfect  offering  of  a  perfect  manhood 
consecrated  by  self-sacrifice — an  offering 
which  brings  back  our  wilful  nature  into 
the  fellowship  with  God  which  it  had  lost. 
It  was  as  our  representative  that  He  lived 
our  life,  conscious  of  Himself  as  the  Son  of 
Man.  It  was  as  our  representative  that 
He  offered  for  us  and  in  our  stead  the 
sacrifice  that  we  had  been  withholding. 
And  living,  risen  and  glorified  through 
death  and  beyond  it,  it  is  still  as  our  repre¬ 
sentative,  the  second  Adam,  the  head  of 
a  redeemed  race,  that  He  builds  up  a  new 
humanity,  a  temple  on  a  secure  basis,  a 
city  that  hath  foundations,  in  which  the 
real  divine  purpose  for  man  is  to  be  realized, 
even  into  an  everlasting  fulfilment.  But 
still  for  every  individual,  the  sin  which 
taints  every  man  and  woman,  aye,  and 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  239 

every  child,  makes  it  a  moral  necessity 
that  there  should  be  a  new  birth,  a  fresh 
incorporation  upon  a  fresh  stock,  the  stock 
of  the  new  man,  Jesus  the  Christ  :  and  this 
incorporation  upon  the  new  stock,  if  it  is 
to  be  efficacious,  must  be  a  real  personal 
act  of  faith  and  repentance,  a  real  ‘  turning  ’ 
of  the  will.  f  Except  ye  be  converted  (or 
‘  turn '),  ye  cannot  enter  into  the  kingdom 
of  God.  And  because  sin  is  ingrained  into 
our  nature,  therefore  the  recovery  of  the 
dominion  of  the  spirit  needs  all  through 
life  a  continual  ‘  mortification/  a  putting 
to  death  of  the  old  man  that  the  new  may 
grow — a  dying  to  live. 

But  do  you  say  to  the  preacher,  this 
is  all  very  commonplace  and  very  old- 
fashioned  ?  We  have  heard  it  very  often. 
But  you  do  not  seem  to  have  been  reading 
modern  literature.  We  have  got  a  some¬ 
what  different  version  of  these  things.  The 
law  of  humanity  is  progress.  The  sphere 
of  progress  is  this  world.  We  look  before 
and  after,  and  find  in  the  scientific  doctrine 
of  development  the  guarantee  of  this 
progress.  This  is  the  gospel  of  modern 
science.  What  you  call  sin  is  a  survival 
of  the  animal  propensities  of  a  pre-human 


240  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 


ancestry — it  is  the  tiger  or  the  ape  in  us — 
which  we  are  slowly  out-growing  in  the 
upward  movement  of  the  human  race. 
Nay,  the  preacher  may  make  rejoinder : 
This  comfortable  doctrine  is  not  science, 
nor  based  on  science,  properly  so-called. 
Professor  Huxley,  who  was  a  scientific  man, 
when  he  came  to  Oxford  to  speak  his 
Romanes  lecture  many  years  ago,  told  us, 
and  it  is  as  true  to-day,  that  science  has 
got  no  gospel  of  progress  at  all.  ‘  The 
survival  of  the  fittest  ’  means  not  the 
survival  of  the  best,  but  the  survival  of 
those  best  suited  to  their  surroundings. 
The  ‘  survival  of  the  fittest  ’  may  mean, 
and  may  come  to  mean,  for  all  that  science 
can  say  to  the  contrary,  ‘  the  survival  of 
the  worst.'  ‘  The  theory  of  evolution,’  1 
he  went  on,  ‘  encourages  no  millennial 
anticipations.  If,  for  millions  of  years, 
our  globe  has  taken  the  upward  road,  yet, 
some  time,  the  summit  will  be  reached  and 
the  downward  road  will  be  commenced.’ 
And  science  knows  not  when  :  neither  in 
the  individual  case,  nor  that  of  the  nation, 
nor  that  of  the  race.  Science  simply  ob¬ 
serves  changes  which  are  sometimes  from 

1  lee.  cit.y  pp.  8o,  85. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  241 

worse  to  better  and  sometimes  from  better 
to  worse,  and  she  traces,  when  she  can, 
the  conditions  and  the  law  of  these  changes  : 
but  she  indulges  in  no  prophecies  and 
would  have  no  reason  at  all,  so  far  as  she 
is  science,  to  be  disappointed  when  an 
epoch  of  change  passes  into  an  epoch  of 
deterioration. 

Nay  :  science  most  certainty  gives  us 
no  message  of  necessary  human  progress. 
How  could  she,  in  view  of  the  facts  of  past 
history  ?  Take  a  tour  in  imagination  round 
the  Mediterranean  Sea,  beginning  with 
Morocco  and  ending  with  Spain.  Examine 
country  after  country,  race  after  race,  city 
after  city.  One  after  another,  almost  with¬ 
out  exception,  through  the  whole  tour, 
they  yield  the  answer  :  Our  contribution 
to  the  sum  of  human  knowledge,  human 
virtue,  human  progress,  was  made  centuries 
ago,  millenniums  ago.  Our  glories  live  in 
the  past.  We  are  interesting  mainly  be¬ 
cause  of  very  remote  memories  or  very 
ancient  history.  And  there  is  little  hope 
of  recovery  here,  except,  perhaps,  through 
the  intrusion  of  some  strange  race  to  dis¬ 
possess  a  fallen  one.  Nay,  extend  your 
view.  Take  a  map  and  go  over  the  surface 

16 


242  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

of  the  globe,  and  ascertain  accurately  of  how 
many  races  you  can  say  that  there  is 
evidence  of  progress,  if  you  compare  what 
they  are  now,  with  what  they  were  a  thou¬ 
sand  years  ago.  You  will  be  astonished 
at  the  vast  area  of  stagnation,  the  vast 
area  of  retrogression  and  decay,  as  com¬ 
pared  to  the  line  of  progress.  Nay,  take 
but  the  progressive  races,  and  you  will 
find  even  more  ambiguous  the  relation  of 
civilization  to  moral  progress.  Nations  do 
not  always  become  better  as  they  grow 
more  civilized.  Sometimes  you  trace  moral 
progress,  as  history  records  it,  and  find  it 
passing  into  an  age  of  general  moral  de¬ 
terioration.  We  seem  to  be  morally  better 
than  we  were  a  hundred  years  ago  in 
England.  But  what  reasonable  man  but 
owns  that  the  moral  condition  of  our 
country  is  very  precarious  ?  Who  then 
can  reasonably  say — with  his  eyes  on  the 
indisputable  and  widely-spread  facts  of 
moral  deterioration  in  races — that  sin  is  a 
survival  which  men  are  seen  to  be  out¬ 
growing  ?  Science  indeed  !  Such  an  idea 
is  mere  wilfulness. 

And  if  you  begin  to  examine  individuals, 
how  utterly  contrary  to  experience  is  any 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  243 

idea  of  regular  advance  1  How  many  men 
disappoint  hopes  !  how  many  deteriorate 
— grow  worse,  not  better  !  How  many 
men  and  women  are  wrecks — the  mere 
ruins  of  what  they  might  have  been  ! 

Have  we  no  doctrine  of  human  progress, 
then  ?  Indeed  we  have  :  it  is  grounded 
on  the  ineradicable  consciousness  of  hope 
which  God,  who  made  man,  has  inspired ; 
it  has  been  nourished  by  His  prophets  ;  it  is 
confirmed  and  realized  by  our  Lord,  Son 
of  God  and  Son  of  Man.  Yes,  men,  accord¬ 
ing  to  Christian  teaching,  are  meant  for 
progress.  There  is  an  assured  goal.  There 
is  to  be  a  perfected  humanity,  a  city  of 
God  in  which  no  good  thing  shall  be  lost, 
into  which  all  the  gains  of  all  mankind 
shall  be  at  last  stored  up  and  accumulated. 
‘  They  shall  bring  the  glory  and  honour  of 
all  nations  into  the  city  of  God.’  But  this 
perfection  cannot  be  won  by  taking  our¬ 
selves  as  we  are  and  languidly  hoping  for 
the  best,  by  treating  sin  as  if  we  should 
naturally  outgrow  it  ;  but  by  awakening- 
from  sin ;  by  knowing  it  to  be  disease 
which  needs  sharp  remedies,  for  it  is 
mortal ;  by  conversion  ;  by  confession  ; 
by  bearing  our  penance  ;  by  a  new  birth 


244  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

into  a  new  manhood  ;  by  a  dying  to  the 
old  manhood  to  live  in  the  new. 

There  is,  of  course,  a  theory  or  way  of 
conceiving  of  the  world  which  is  called 
scientific,  which  is  in  the  most  direct  conflict 
with  the  Christian  teaching  about  sin — I 
mean,  the  theory  which  refuses  to  see 
anything  in  the  world  but  the  inevitable 
sequence  of  physical  phenomena,  according 
to  physical  law,  which  would  have  good 
characters  and  bad  characters  to  be  merely 
physical  products,  like  good  apples  and 
bad  apples,  and  which  refuses,  accordingly, 
to  recognize  the  possibility  of  any  actions 
which  ought  not  to  have  been  done,  and, 
in  fact,  need  not  have  been  done.  But 
such  a  fatalism  really  ignores  a  whole  class 
of  facts  involved  in  our  moral  consciousness. 
Confessedly  it  will  not  work  ;  that  is,  it 
has  to  be  repudiated  in  order  to  deal  with 
real  life.  You  cannot  dare  to  educate  a 
child  in  the  belief  that  nothing  he  may  do 
could  have  been  otherwise.  All  possibility 
of  moral  progress  is  bound  up  with  the 
belief  in  moral  freedom.  You  can  give  no 
account  on  such  a  theory  of  the  ineradicable 
consciousness  of  guilt  and  shame  which 
belongs  to  a  fairly  good  man  when  he  has 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  245 

done  really  wrong — ‘  the  self-contempt, 
bitterer  to  drink  than  blood/  On  the  other 
hand,  the  postulate  of  voluntary  action, 
the  power,  that  is,  to  direct  a  certain 
amount  of  force  in  the  channel  of  one  kind 
of  action  or  of  another,  does  not  result  in 
any  conclusion  incompatible  with  any  ob¬ 
served  or  observable  facts  of  the  physical 
world.  You  may  defy  any  one  to  show 
you  any  observed  or  observable  fact  which 
must  have  been  otherwise  if  the  postulate 
of  moral  freedom  were  true.  I  think  we 
are  not  wrong  in  saying  that  the  denial  of 
the  fundamental  axiom  of  moral  responsi¬ 
bility  is  due,  not  to  any  contrary  facts,  but 
to  an  abstract  refusal  to  recognize  any 
other  class  of  facts  than  those  which  fall 
under  the  purview  of  physical  investigation. 
May  we  not  hope  that  in  this  region,  at 
least,  a  better  relationship  is  already  afoot 
between  religion  and  moral  thought  on  the 
one  side,  and  physical  science  on  the  other  ? 
We  have  lost  a  really  great  man  in  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer — really  great,  because  he 
determined  to  view  the  sum  of  ascertainable 
reality  as  a  whole,  and  to  deal  with  it  as 
a  whole,  and  pursued  this  great  ambition 
with  such  indomitable  industry.  But  may 


246  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

we  not  say  that  so  far  as  his  was  an  attempt 
to  bring  all  facts,  including  moral  and 
spiritual  facts,  under  a  single  formula  of 
physical  evolution,  it  belongs  to  a  bygone 
age,  to  the  hot  and  arrogant  youth  of 
science  ;  and  that  science,  since  Herbert 
Spencer  began  to  write,  has  become  wonder¬ 
fully  more  modest  and  conscious  of  its 
limitations  ;  even  as  its  old  rival,  theology, 
has  quite  changed  its  attitude  and  become 
wonderfully  deferential  and  respectful  to¬ 
ward  physical  science — even,  perhaps,  at 
times  too  submissive  to  its  more  hasty  or 
conjectural  utterances  ? 

We  must  be  true  both  to  physical  reality 
and  to  that  which  is  moral  and  spiritual, 
and  interpret  each  apart,  and  on  its  own 
ground,  and  by  its  own  methods,  if  we 
are  to  attain  more  nearly  to  completeness 
of  knowledge  and  fullness  of  outlook. 

But  if  you  set  aside  a  fatalist  view  of  the 
universe — if  the  fact  of  moral  choice  and 
moral  responsibility  is  admitted — then  I 
cannot  understand  how  there  is  any  stop¬ 
ping  on  the  way  to  the  acceptance  of  the 
Christian  view  of  sin. 

Let  it  be  granted  that  the  doctrine  of 
physical  evolution  has  occupied  the  ground 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  247 

of  human  thought,  and  permanently  dis¬ 
placed  the  idea  of  special  creations — let 
it  be  granted,  that  is,  that  our  race  de¬ 
veloped  out  of  an  animal  ancestry  ;  let 
it  be  granted  that  the  early  chapters  of 
Genesis  give  us  in  forms  of  the  imagination 
certain  elemental  spiritual  truths  about 
God,  and  nature,  and  man,  and  human 
sin — that  they  most  assuredly  do — but 
no  actual  history  of  the  origins  of  things ; 
still  the  fact  remains — the  development 
of  the  human  race  has  not  been  what  it 
might  have  been,  what  it  ought  to  have 
been,  what  in  the  purpose  of  God  it  was 
intended  to  be.  I  know  this  for  a  fact, 
because  I  know  it  in  my  own  history.  I 
am  not  what  I  was  meant  to  be.  And 
the  reason  of  my  miserable  failure  to  be¬ 
come  what  God  meant  me  to  be,  is  nothing 
whatever  but  my  sin,  my  faithlessness, 
my  wilfulness,  my  impatience,  my  lawless 
lust — my  fault,  my  own  fault,  my  own 
great  fault.  I  know  this  is  true  of  myself, 
if  I  like  to  think.  I  know  it  is  true  in 
countless  others.  I  see  their  wilfulness, 
waywardness,  selfishness  spoiling  homes, 
ruining  friendship,  alienating  love,  corrupt¬ 
ing  life,  on  all  sides.  I  work  this  out  on 


248  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

the  great  scale,  and  see  sin — human  law¬ 
lessness — retarding  the  divine  purpose  for 
man’s  development  all  through,  turning 
into  evil  what  was  meant  for  good.  I  see 
this  sin  in  the  individual  writ  large  in 
the  race,  and  I  know  its  true  character 
in  my  own  heart.  I  go  back  in  imagination 
to  the  beginning,  and  I  know  that,  however 
and  wherever  and  whenever  the  human 
consciousness,  the  consciousness  of  self, 
the  consciousness  of  choice,  the  conscious¬ 
ness  of  fellowship  with  the  divine,  dawned 
in  the  animal  organism,  there,  back  in  the 
dim  beginnings,  under  conditions  which  I 
can  but  dimly  realize,  it  must  have  been 
the  same  thing  in  principle.  What  re¬ 
tarded,  impeded,  destroyed  at  the  begin¬ 
ning,  in  the  rude  beginnings  of  our  race,  is 
what  retards,  impedes,  destroys  now — sin. 

I  am  saying  nothing  about  the  tainting 
of  the  stock  of  manhood  and  the  inheritance 
of  sin,  though  I  find  it  wholly  impossible 
to  doubt  that  sin  has  weakened  the  race 
by  an  inherited  taint  or  disorder.  And  I 
do  not  anticipate  that  careful  biological 
or  psychological  science  is  likely  ultimately 
to  find  itself  in  ascertained  conflict  with 
this  idea.  I  recall  a  remark  of  George 


THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN  249 

Romanes  that  Weismann  himself  would, 
he  doubted  not,  be  the  first  to  allow  that 
his  theory  of  heredity  encounters  greater 
difficulties  in  the  domain  of  ethics  than 
in  any  other — unless,  indeed,  it  were  in 
that  of  religion.1  But  I  make  no  assump¬ 
tion  here  of  the  quasi-physical  transmission 
of  sin.  I  look  now  only  to  the  universality 
of  actual  sins  in  experience,  and  to  the 
light  in  which  they  reveal  themselves  in 
the  inner  consciousness  ;  and  I  say,  the 
Bible  is  right.  Sin  is  the  great  enemy. 
There  is  no  illusion  so  extraordinary  as 
the  light-heartedness  of  men  in  view  of 
the  mastery  which  sin  manifestly  has  over 
them  and  in  them.  And  as  the  Christian 
message  is  a  message  to  men  who  feel  the 
burden  and  the  guilt  of  sin,  so  true  is  it 
that  what  we  need  to-day  is  some  John 
the  Baptist  to  prepare  the  way  of  the 
Lord  by  arousing  us  again  in  all  classes, 
and  under  all  sorts  of  conditions  in  life, 
to  a  wholesome  and  a  godly  fear  of  sin  and 
of  its  consequences. 

The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand. 

1  See  Darwin  and  After  Darwin  (Longmans,  1895), 
ii.  p.  90. 


25O  THE  CHRISTIAN  IDEA  OF  SIN 

There  is  no  optimism  so  strong  as  the 
optimism  of  the  forecast  for  humanity 
which  our  religion  offers  us,  if  only  we  will 
set  ourselves  deliberately  to  face,  and 
recognize,  and  deal  with  the  one  great 
obstacle,  in  the  only  way  in  which  it  can 
be  dealt  with — the  obstacle  of  sin.  We 
must  deal  with  it  first  in  ourselves,  and  if 
in  ourselves  we  have  realized  something 
of  the  joy  and  thankfulness  which  belong 
to  those  who  know  themselves  to  be 
redeemed  men — men  in  whom  the  divine 
redemption  is  actually  taking  place — then 
and  then  only  we  can  go  out  into  the  world 
to  do  the  work  of  evangelists,  and  make 
men  feel  that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
among  us  and  within. 


SERMON  IV 

SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS  OF  CHRISTIANITY  1 

Whosoever  he  be  of  you  that  forsaketli  not  all  that  he 
hath,  he  cannot  be  my  disciple. — St.  Luke  xiv.  33. 

The  genius  of  the  Christian  religion  is 
sacrifice.  When  our  Lord  began  to  pub¬ 
lish  the  kingdom,  He  first  of  all  accom¬ 
panied  His  proclamation  by  revealing  the 
character  of  God  in  acts  of  compassion, 
the  compassion  which  had  power  in  it  to 
heal  and  to  lift  ;  and  all  this  disclosure  of 
the  powerful  pity  of  God  was  made  very 
freely,  and  so  as  to  involve  very  little 
claim  on  the  lives  of  the  men  who  were  the 
objects  of  it.  But  when  He  proceeded  to 
build  His  spiritual  kingdom,  it  was  different. 
Then  we  see  Him  standing,  as  it  were, 
over  against  the  wills  and  hearts  of  men, 
inviting,  attracting  to  sacrifice,  claiming 
sacrifice,  welcoming  the  sacrifice  when  it 

1  The  Commemoration  Sermon,  preached  before  the 
University  of  Oxford,  on  June  17,  1906. 


251 


252  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

is  offered.  He  prepares  the  apostles  by  a 
preliminary  discipline,  and  then  claims  of 
them  the  sacrifice  of  their  profession  and 
its  prospects  by  His  *  Follow  me/  So  it 
is  with  the  fishermen  ;  so  it  is  with  the 
tax  collector.  And  these  are  no  mere 
episodes.  They  exhibit  the  principle  which 
our  Lord  loves  to  state  in  the  most  para¬ 
doxical  form.  If  a  man  ‘  forsake  not 
all  that  he  hath  '  ;  if  he  ‘  hate  not  his 
father,  and  mother,  and  wife,  and  children, 
and  brethren,  and  sisters,  yea,  and  his 
own  life  also,  he  cannot  be  my  disciple/ 
The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  a  pearl  of 
great  price,  and  a  man  must  sell  all  that 
he  hath  to  buy  it. 

Our  Lord  educates  His  disciples  to  recog¬ 
nize  the  justification  of  the  sacrifice  which 
He  demands.  His  dealings  with  them 
are  all  directed  to  fostering  in  their  minds 
the  sense  that  He  Himself  is  absolutely 
to  be  trusted  in  all  emergencies,  for  all 
the  needs  of  body  and  spirit,  in  all  the 
critical  moments  of  life  and  death — that 
He  is  all  they  need.  When  He  had 
fostered  this  sense,  He  draws  from  Peter, 
as  He  had  before  drawn  from  him  the 
confession  of  His  name,  so  now  the  pro- 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


253 


fession  of  His  service  :  ‘  Behold,  we  have 
left  all  and  followed  thee.’  And  He  meets 
this  profession  with  a  like  benediction : 
‘  Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto  you,  that  ye 
which  have  followed  me,  and  every  one 
that  hath  left  houses,  or  brethren,  or  sisters 
or  father,  or  mother,  or  children,  or  lands, 
for  my  name’s  sake,  shall  receive  an 
hundredfold,  and  shall  inherit  eternal  life/ 
And  this  welcoming  of  sacrifice  is  not 
limited  to  any  particular  class.  It  is  the 
characteristic  mark  of  all  our  Lord’s  deal¬ 
ings  with  human  souls.  The  rich  man 
Zacchaeus  is  blessed,  because,  when  our 
Lord  had  arrested  his  attention,  and  con¬ 
verted  his  will,  he  stood  out  publicly,  and 
made  public  sacrifice,  going  far  beyond 
what  could  be  said  to  be  required  of  him. 
‘  Behold,  Lord,  the  half  of  all  that  I 
possess  I  give  to  the  poor,  and  I  restore 
fourfold  any  wrongful  exaction  which  as 
a  tax-collector  I  have  made/  And  the 
solemn  benediction  falls  on  him  :  ‘  This 

day  is  salvation  come  to  this  house/ 
Just  in  the  same  spirit  our  Lord  blesses 
the  woman  who  publicly  showed  her  lavish 
love  by  costly  sacrifice,  who  poured  the 
cruse  of  exceeding  precious  ointment  upon 


254  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

His  head.  Just  in  the  same  spirit 
our  Lord  meets  the  rich  young  man  who 
wanted  to  know  the  way  of  perfection,  and 
claims  of  him  the  total  sacrifice  of  his 
worldly  possessions,  and  when  he  would 
not  make  it,  lets  him  go  away  sorrowful. 
Just  in  the  same  spirit  He  welcomes  the 
widow’s  mite,  not  because  it  cost  her 
nothing,  but  because  it  was  ‘  all  her  living.’ 
This,  I  say,  is  the  principle  of  our  Lord’s 
dealing. 

We  rightly  claim  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  as  the  moral  law  of  the  Christian 
kingdom.  But  it  is  very  unlike  ordinary 
legislation.  It  does  not  consist  of  pro¬ 
hibitions  ;  nor  does  it  enjoin  for  the  more 
part  such  external  actions  as  can  be 
required  in  a  settled  community  of  all  its 
citizens.  But  it  deals  with  the  motives 
of  the  heart  and  of  the  will ;  and  when  it 
embodies  its  claims  in  characteristic  actions, 
they  are  actions  which  have,  as  it  were, 
the  character  of  individual  paradox — the 
paradox  of  self-sacrifice. 

Against  all  this  must  be  set  the  fact  that 
our  Lord  was  preparing  an  organized 
society,  and  solemnly  and  repeatedly  im¬ 
parted  to  the  organized  society  the  proper 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


255 


legislative  authority  over  the  members 
of  the  society  which  is  essential  for  corpor¬ 
ate  life — that  is,  the  power  to  bind  and 
loose.  The  facts  of  the  earliest  Christian 
church  cannot  be  fairly  interpreted  except 
on  the  supposition  that  Christ  was  the 
conscious  founder  of  a  visible  society,  and 
prepared  the  way  for  its  corporate  and 
continuous  life.  In  only  one  particular  of 
moral  conduct  did  He  Himself  legislate, 
in  the  spirit  of  the  ordinary  legislator, 
and  that  was  with  regard  to  the  sanctity 
of  marriage.  But  our  Lord  recognizes  and 
provides  the  conditions  necessary  for  the 
continuous  life  of  any  society — the  per¬ 
manence  of  the  social  law  in  its  ordinary 
sense.  This,  however,  is  not  the  most 
characteristic  part  of  His  method.  Within 
the  area  of  what  can  be  required  of  the 
ordinary  good  man,  He  stands  over 
against  the  souls  of  men  already  pious  and 
God-fearing,  over  against  those  who  would 
turn  from  sin  to  God,  inviting  to  sacrifice, 
claiming  sacrifice,  encouraging  and  welcom¬ 
ing  sacrifice,  meeting  it  with  His  supreme 
benediction,  as  if  it  were  in  that  alone 
that  the  true  relation  of  the  soul  to  God  is 
exhibited  and  realized. 


256  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

And  it  is  exactly  the  same  principle  that 
we  find  in  the  Acts  and  in  the  apostolic 
epistles.  The  church  promptly  shows  her¬ 
self  a  legislative  body,  binding  and  loosing, 
that  is,  forbidding  and  allowing,  prescribing 
the  necessary  minimum  for  common  and 
corporate  life.  ‘  It  seemed  good  to  the 
Holy  Ghost,  and  to  us,  to  lay  upon  you  no 
greater  burden  than  these  necessary  things  : 
that  ye  abstain  from  things  sacrificed  to 
idols,  and  from  blood,  and  from  things 
strangled,  and  from  fornication.  From 
which  if  you  keep  yourselves  it  shall  be  well 
with  you.’  There  is  the  binding  and  loos¬ 
ing  church,  prescribing  the  minimum  neces¬ 
sary  for  corporate  life  ;  but  within  the  area 
thus  marked  out,  the  life  of  the  church 
exhibits  itself  freely  and  delightfully  in 
voluntary  sacrifice,  so  that  the  very  dis¬ 
tinctions  of  thine  and  mine  are  for  the  time 
obliterated. 

Again  St.  Paul  shows,  as  much  as  any 
man,  the  consciousness  of  what  is  required 
of  the  church,  if  it  is  to  be  held  together 
as  a  continuous  corporate  society.  There 
must  be  the  ordinary  action  of  legislation. 
St.  Paul  perceives  that  legislation  consists 
mainly  in  negatives,  and  that  its  object 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


257 


is  to  keep  down  wickedness.  ‘  Law  is 
not  made  for  the  righteous,  but  for  the 
ungodly/  And  for  all  the  strong  contrast 
that  St.  Paul  draws  between  the  charac¬ 
teristic  of  the  Old  Covenant,  which  is  law, 
and  the  characteristic  of  the  New  Covenant, 
which  is  grace,  still  from  the  first  he 
appears  as  the  organizer  and  the  legislator 
of  the  churches — and  that  without  any 
scruple  or  hesitation.  He  legislates  with 
regard  to  women’s  veils,  and  for  the  regula¬ 
tion  of  prophecy  and  tongues,  in  his  earlier 
epistles  to  the  Corinthians,  quite  as  readily 
as  he  legislates  for  the  requirements  of 
the  churches  of  Ephesus  or  Crete,  through 
his  apostolic  legates  Timothy  and  Titus, 
at  the  end  of  his  life.  But  within  the  area 
secured  thus  by  legislation  from  the  over¬ 
flowings  of  wickedness,  the  positive  and 
characteristic  spirit  of  Christianity  has  its 
vantage-ground,  and  that  is  the  spirit  of 
sacrifice. 

St.  Paul,  in  his  conception  of  the  sacrifice 
of  Christ  which  redeemed  us,  treats  it  in¬ 
deed  as  a  vicarious  act,  in  that  it  is  God’s 
pure  gift  to  us,  to  which  we  contributed 
nothing,  and  which  was  done  of  Christ’s 
own  love  and  the  Father’s  love  for  our 

I7 


25S  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

sakes,  and  in  our  stead.  But,  also,  St. 
Paul’s  whole  conception  of  this  vicarious 
sacrifice  is  that  it  stands  over  against 
us,  as  a  challenge  or  appeal  to  us  to 
do  the  like,  and  that  as  a  matter  of 
course.  It  is  something  which  rests  on 
the  incontrovertible  logic  of  the  heart. 
'  Because  we  thus  judge,  that  if  one  died 
for  all,  therefore  all  died  ’  ;  that  is,  in  His 
person,  all  who  believed  in  Him  were, 
once  for  all,  alienated,  as  by  death,  from 
the  world  which  had  put  Him  to  death  ; 
‘  and  he  died  for  all,  that  they  which  live 
should  no  longer  live  unto  themselves,  but 
unto  him  who  for  their  sakes  died  and 
lived  again/  The  sacrifice  of  Christ  is, 
to  St.  Paul,  simply  an  appeal  to  us  to  go 
and  do  likewise  ;  and  in  his  own  practice 
he  delights  to  recognize  that  he  is  doing 
something  over  and  above  what  anybody 
can  say  is  required  of  him.  It  is  required 
by  his  very  vocation  that  he  should  preach 
the  Gospel ;  and  that,  with  all  its  attendant 
risks  and  dangers,  is  what  all  men  can  claim 
of  him,  as  God  claims  it  of  him.  But  he 
delights  to  offer  a  free-will  offering  over  and 
above  this  ;  and  the  free-will  offering  is  that 
he  should  receive  no  pay,  though  he  can 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


259 


claim  it  if  he  would,  for  '  the  labourer 
is  worthy  of  his  hire/  by  Christ’s  own 
declaration. 

We  need  not  attribute  to  St.  Paul  a 
doctrine  of  merit,  against  which  his  whole 
theology  is  in  revolt.  Merit,  we  may  say, 
lives,  for  St.  Paul,  ‘  from  man  to  man,  and 
not  from  man,  O  God,  to  Thee.’  But  the 
evident  truth  is  that  St.  Paul  thought 
it  a  characteristic  exhibition  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  spirit  that  a  man  should  offer  a  free 
sacrifice,  something  over  and  above  what 
could  be  required  or  expected  by  one  man 
of  another,  over  and  above  what  could  be 
required  by  the  church  of  all  its  members 
or  officers. 

We  shall  find  this  same  principle  charac¬ 
teristic  of  the  other  writers  of  the  New 
Testament.  The  characteristic  of  love  in 
St.  John’s  Epistles  is  sacrifice:  'Hereby 
know  we  love,  because  he  laid  down  his 
life  for  us,  and  we  ought  to  lay  down  our 
lives  for  the  brethren  ;  ’  that  is,  sacrifice 
can  only  be  met  and  responded  to  by  like 
sacrifice,  the  sacrifice  of  God  by  our  self- 
sacrifice.  And  in  the  Apocalypse  the  char¬ 
acteristic  Christian  assemblages,  the  gather¬ 
ings  before  the  Throne,  appear  to  be 


260  sacrifice,  the  genius 

gatherings  of  men  who  have  made  the 
great  sacrifices.  They  are  martyrs  and 
virgins. 

Thus  the  conception  we  are  led  to  form 
of  the  church  in  the  New  Testament  sug¬ 
gests  a  picture  to  which  the  facts  of  the 
church  correspond  very  generally  in  all 
its  best  periods  in  history.  It  is  the  picture 
of  a  society  visibly  organized  in  the  world 
with  an  ordinary  legislation,  keeping  it 
distinct  from  other  societies  and  guarding  its 
necessary  boundaries.  But  within  the  area 
thus  marked  off,  the  characteristic  life 
of  the  society  is  found  not  merely  in  con¬ 
formity  to  a  normal  rule,  but  in  the  exercise 
of  personal  and  voluntary  sacrifice.  The 
characteristic  spirit  of  the  church  is  seen  in 
the  martyrs,  who  are  allowed  to  combine 
in  one  act  the  necessary  requirement  upon 
every  one — that  he  should  not  deny  his 
Lord — with  the  highest  ecstasy  of  voluntary 
joy.  I  say  the  characteristic  spirit  of  the 
church  is  seen  in  her  martyrs,  her  virgins, 
her  hermits,  her  missionaries,  her  evan¬ 
gelists.  These  are  characteristic,  because 
they  exhibit  the  spirit  in  a  striking  form. 
There  is  no  need  to  say  that  they  are  better 
than  the  fathers  and  mothers,  and  Christian 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


26l 


men  of  business,  and  theologians,  and 
ordinary  clergy,  whose  sacrifices  are  in¬ 
conspicuous,  ‘  who  live  faithfully  hidden 
lives/  But  what  it  is  necessary  to  say  is 
that  where  the  true  spirit  of  Christianity 
is  kept  alive  in  the  community,  there  it 
will  always  be  recognized  that  self-sacrifice 
is  the  normal  and  characteristic  thing  ; 


and  it  will  be  continually  exhibiting  itself 
outwardly  and  visibly  in  special  charac¬ 
teristic  acts,  such  as  the  abandonment  of 
wealth,  or  the  abandonment  of  family  life, 
or  the  abandonment  of  home ;  and  if 
the  spirit  is  not  finding  expression  in 
these  and  the  like  ‘  evangelical  counsels/ 


it  must  be  reckoned  in  all  probability 
that  the  church  is  being  unfaithful  to  her 
true  self. 

Our  minds  naturally  go  back  to  the 
English  Christianity  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  with  its  detestation  of  enthusiasm,1 
when  a  man  like  Bishop  Butler  could  say 


1  I  do  not  deny  that  what  Butler  and  his  contem¬ 
poraries  meant  by  ‘  enthusiasm  ’  was  something  different 
to  what  we  mean  by  it,  and  that  we  ought  to  condemn 
what  they  condemned  as  enthusiasm  ;  but  I  think  that 
this  condemnation  of  enthusiasm  in  a  bad  sense,  involved 
a  wonderful  ignoring  of  the  place  in  the  Christian 
character  of  enthusiasm  in  the  right  sense. 


262  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

of  a  man  like  George  Whitefield  :  *  Sir, 

the  pretending  to  extraordinary  revelation 
and  gifts  of  the  Holy  Ghost  is  a  horrid 
thing,  a  very  horrid  thing/  The  idea 
then  seems  to  have  been  that  enthusiasm 
was  something  contradictory  to  settled 
organization  and  order,  or  to  rational  re¬ 
ligion  ;  but  this  is  the  greatest  possible 
mistake.  It  is  the  function  of  the  intellect 
to  appreciate  the  facts  and  motives  and 
conceptions  of  the  Christian  life,  and  to 
bring  them  into  relation  with  the  whole 
of  human  knowledge,  and  to  bring  out 
clearly,  for  the  enlightenment  of  the  Chris¬ 
tian  spirit,  what  our  religion  really  means, 
and  what  intellectual  propositions  it  must 
necessarily  maintain  and  contend  for,  if 
it  is  to  subsist  in  the  world  of  thought 
and  controversy.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  enthusiasm  of  the  first  Christian  church 
could  not  have  won  the  world,  if  the 
theologians  of  the  Christian  church  had 
not  been  maintaining  their  intellectual 
position  in  the  face  of  the  world’s  thought. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  great  periods  of 
Christian  enthusiasm  have  always  been 
in  some  close  relation  to  the  great 
periods  of  intellectual  revival.  In  the 


OF  CHRISTIANITY  263 

eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries,  it  is 
not  easy  to  exaggerate  how  much  the 
revivals  of  religion,  evangelical  and  catholic, 
owed  to  the  fact  that  the  great  apologists, 
the  Berkeleys,  the  Butlers,  the  Paleys,  had 
secured  the  intellectual  standing-ground. 
But  to  secure  the  intellectual  platform  is 
one  thing — to  mark  out  the  area  of  Chris- 
tion  thought  in  its  broad  outline  is  one 
thing — and  to  live  the  life  within  the  area 
is  another.  The  apologist  of  the  eighteenth 
century  has  been  compared  to  a  landlord 
who  accumulates  the  title-deeds  of  an 
estate  which  he  neglects  to  cultivate. 

Once  again,  there  is,  or  ought  to  be,  no 
kind  of  conflict  between  organization  and 
enthusiasm.  That  is  to  say,  there  is  no 
necessary  conflict.  And  in  fact  the  clearer 
and  more  definite  the  recognition  of  the 
authority  of  government  in  the  church, 
the  easier  the  welcoming  of  enthusiasm. 
It  has  been  the  clear  recognition  of  au¬ 
thority — the  clear  action  of  organization — 
in  the  Roman  Church  which  (as  has  been 
very  often  recognized)  has  been  the  chief 
advantage  which  the  Roman  Church  has 
had  in  welcoming  and  giving  free  play 
to  the  enthusiasm  of  sacrifice.  It  has 


264  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

been  because  the  idea  of  ecclesiastical 
authority  in  the  church  of  England  has 
been  confused  and  mixed  up  with  the 
totally  distinct  idea  of  civil  authority,  that 
the  life  of  the  church  has  been  hampered. 
The  lines  of  what  the  church  allows  and 
does  not  allow  have  been  confused  and 
broken  down  ;  and  as  a  consequence  we 
have  had  such  a  frequent  exhibition  of  the 
conflict  between  enthusiasm  and  authority  ; 
not  because  the  enthusiasm  is  necessarily 
lawless,  or  the  authority  narrow,  but  be¬ 
cause  authority  has  not  been  free  to  la}' 
down  the  lines  within  which  the  fresh  life 
of  the  church  can  be  allowed  its  heroic 
ventures,  and  can  feel  the  strong  founda¬ 
tion  under  its  feet  for  enthusiastic  devo¬ 
tion. 

This,  then,  is  the  point  :  The  church 
is  a  visible,  continuous  and  organized  body. 
It  must  have  its  laws,  therefore,  positive 
and  negative.  They  are  contemplated  by 
Christ,  who  gave  the  church  divine  autho¬ 
rity  to  govern.  *  Whatsoever  ye  shall 
bind  on  earth  shall  be  bound  in  heaven  ; 
and  whatsoever  ye  shall  loose  on  earth, 
shall  be  loosed  in  heaven/  He  made  it 
part  of  the  obligation  of  discipleship  to 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


265 

hear  the  church.  The  church  has  thus 
fulfilled  her  function  rightly  in  laying  down 
necessary  limits,  doctrinal  and  practical. 
In  doing  this  there  must  be  a  minimum 
prescribed.  A  man  who  does  not  do  such 
and  such  things ;  who  needlessly  works  on 
the  Lord’s  day ;  or  fails  to  attend  the  Lord’s 
service  ;  or  does  not  observe  such  and  such 
requirements  ;  or  repudiates  such  and 
such  a  truth,  must  be  excommunicated. 
That  is  to  say  that  his  conduct  or  belief 
is  inconsistent  with  the  fundamental  re¬ 
quirements  of  membership.  It  is  the  same 
with  the  positive  moral  law.  It  must 
subsist  for  the  lawless,  the  unholy  and  pro¬ 
fane  ;  to  warn  them  off,  to  say  ‘  Thou 
shalt  not  ’  ;  to  say,  once  and  again  : 
‘  They  that  do  such  things  shall  not  inherit 
the  kingdom  of  God  ’  ;  to  say,  here  and 
now,  that  they  cannot  be  allowed  the 
privilege  of  Christian  fellowship.  But  it 
is  within  the  area  secured  thus  from  the 
ravages  of  lawlessness  ;  within  the  area 
where  there  are  thus  established  certain 
accepted  principles  of  thinking  and  feeling 
and  living  and  worshipping, — it  is  within 
this  area  that  the  real  Christian  motive 
can  be  brought  freely  into  play.  The 


266  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

drawing  of  the  limits  is,  in  every  sense  of 
the  word,  the  beginning  and  not  the  end. 
It  is  the  necessary  condition  of  the  life 
itself.  But  the  life  itself  means  the  up¬ 
holding  and  keeping  in  conspicuous  pro¬ 
minence  of  the  Lord’s  sacrifice,  as  that 
which  must  appeal  to  men  to  meet  like 
with  like,  to  give  all  for  all. 

I  have  tried  to  describe  the  place  of 
sacrifice  in  the  Christian  life  ;  the  place 
which  it  holds  by  relation  to  intellectual 
effort  and  to  organization  ;  the  place  it 
holds  by  relation  to  the  function  of  posi¬ 
tive  law.  I  have  tried  to  draw  this  picture 
of  where  law  ends  and  sacrifice  begins — or 
rather  where  law  passes  into  love,  for 
it  is  all  of  the  same  moral  substance — and 
the  spirit  of  conformity  passes  into  the 
spirit  of  sacrifice.  I  have  tried  to  do  this, 
because  when  we  endeavour  to  attain  to 
quietness,  and  to  take  a  comprehensive 
view  of  the  times  we  live  in,  we  appear  to 
be  running  a  great  risk  of  missing  the  op¬ 
portunity  offered  to  our  church,  for  no 
other  reason  than  because  we  fail  to  recog¬ 
nize  these  necessary  conditions  of  the  life 
of  the  Christian  society.  I  mean  that  we 
neither  draw  limits — we  neither  exercise 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


267 


the  proper  function  of  law ;  nor  do  we  give 
its  true  place,  or  anything  like  its  true 
place,  to  the  free  spirit  of  sacrifice.  We 
resent  law  in  religion.  We  dislike  laying 
down  necessary  conditions  of  orthodoxy. 
We  dislike  saying  that  any  positive  dogma 
is  really  a  necessary  limit  for  the  exercise 
of  Christian  communion,  or  even  of  the 
Christian  ministry.  We  resent  the  require¬ 
ment  of  anything  specific — for  instance, 
the  requirement  of  confirmation.  We  are 
always  finding  individual  excuses  such  as 
seem  to  require  us  to  dispense  with  the 
Christian  law  of  marriage  in  its  strictness. 
We  seem  to  have  lost  the  art  of  saying 
positively  ‘No.’  It  seems  to  me,  however, 
self-evident  that,  though  the  specific  re¬ 
quirements  of  the  church — its  positive 
and  necessary  laws — should  be  as  simple 
and  as  few  as  possible,  yet  some  positive 
limits,  such  as  must  be  insisted  upon,  and 
such  as  involve  saying  :  ‘  If  you  will  not 
conform  to  this,  you  cannot  share  our 
fellowship,  and  must  be,  from  our  point 
of  view,  outside  and  not  inside  our  body  ’ 
— are  necessary  to  the  life  of  any  society 
which  would  call  itself  Christian.  We 
should  lay  on  people  no  more  than  the  most 


268  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

necessary  things  ;  but  this  necessary  mini¬ 
mum  we  must  lay  on  them,  as  a  condition 
of  communion  or  as  a  condition  of  ministry. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  what  an 
individual  or  what  a  society  really  means, 
depends  in  the  long  run,  at  certain  points, 
on  what  he  or  it  is  definitely  prepared  to 
exclude. 

The  Church  of  England  has  a  vocation 
to  be  broad.  Let  us  praise  God  for  it. 
But  breadth  is  quite  consistent  with  know¬ 
ing  what  our  principles  are  and  respecting 
them.  We  suffer  then  from  this  point  of 
view  from  lack  of  definiteness.  If  we  are 
to  play  our  part,  we  must  be  content  as 
a  church  to  define  our  limits,  to  know 
where  we  are  bound  to  agree,  as  well  as 
where  we  are  content  to  differ.  What  we 
want  is  that  it  should  be  evident  before 
the  eyes  of  our  members,  and  before  the 
eyes  of  the  world  generally,  that  we  stand 
for  a  certain  body  of  agreement,  as  well 
as  for  a  large  toleration  of  indifference. 
That  is  a  quite  intelligible  standing-ground 
— to  my  mind  the  best  and  more  Christian. 
Granted  that,  we  want  not  to  make  too 
much  of  our  dogmatic  limits,  but  to  treat 
all  these  as  simply  affording  the  necessary 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


269 


starting-point  for  what  is  the  real  life  of 
the  church.  I  speak  now  only  of  the 
church's  spiritual  life.  But  here,  again, 
we  appear  to  be  defective,  almost  as  much 
as  we  appear  to  be  defective  in  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  positive  law.  The  perilous 
tendency  among  us  is  to  appeal  always 
to  averages  or  majorities  ;  to  ask  ourselves 
what  sort  of  religion  we  can  induce  men 
in  general,  rich  or  poor,  to  accept  and 
welcome ;  to  make  religion  easy ;  to 
abstain  from  asking  too  much  ;  to  accom¬ 
modate  the  requirements  of  religion  to 
what  we  suppose  men  in  general  will  be 
ready  to  accept.  Nothing  could  be  so 
directly  contrary  to  the  method  of  Christ. 
He  never  will  suffer  the  best  to  be  sacrificed 
to  what  may  be  supposed  to  be  the  average 
requirement.  He  moves  on  His  way  re¬ 
lentlessly,  presenting  the  high  and  com¬ 
plete  claim,  though  it  became  more  and 
more  evident  that  His  people  as  a  whole 
would  reject  it.  He  never  turns  aside  to 
remodel  His  religion,  and  to  accommodate 
it  to  what  would  be  found  generally  to 
commend  itself  to  each  class,  to  Sadducee 
or  to  Pharisee  ;  to  accommodate  it  to  what 
would  be  found  compatible  with  the  politics 


2JO  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

of  the  one  and  the  prejudices  of  the  other  ; 
or  to  what  the  mass  of  the  people  might 
be  prepared  to  accept  without  too  much 
effort.  Our  Lord  chose  and  sanctified 
exactly  the  opposite  method.  He  appealed 
with  the  whole  truth,  for  the  whole  of  the 
man's  heart.  In  various  ways  He  is  con¬ 
tinually  saying  :  ‘If  a  man  will  not  let 
My  appeal,  the  appeal  of  God,  be  a  thing 
altogether  without  competition  in  his  heart, 
and  give  all  for  all,  he  cannot  be  My  dis¬ 
ciple.’  True,  His  appeal  was  welcome  only 
to  the  few.  It  was  a  little  band  that 
gathered  round  Him.  The  wisdom  of  God 
within  Him  perceived  and  saw  that  the 
way  to  produce  real  moral  results  is  through 
the  few  who  are  the  light  of  the  world, 
and  the  salt,  and  the  city  set  on  a  hill. 

There  is  a  great  claim,  a  claim  over¬ 
whelmingly  great,  made  upon  the  church 
to-day.  Our  colonies  are  crying  out  for 
help  ;  our  missions  are  so  miserably  under¬ 
staffed  that  they  are  indisputably  failing 
to  meet  the  obvious  and  unmistakable 
requirements  laid  upon  them.  At  home 
there  are  men  and  women  in  multitudes 
needed  for  the  work  of  teaching,  the  work 
of  evangelization,  the  work  of  social  re- 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


271 


covery,  in  the  great  towns  and  villages  of 
our  country.  Great  sins  are  flaunting 
themselves  in  England,  as  in  America, 
stalking,  as  it  seems,  in  almost  unrebuked 
insolence.  Truly  there  is  a  work  for  us 
to  do  ;  and  in  this  place  to-day,  we  may 
well  be  girding  ourselves  to  do  it.  We  are 
the  inheritors  here  of  the  great  past.  We 
are  thanking  God  for  founders  and  bene¬ 
factors  who  have  bestowed  so  much  upon 
this  incomparable  place,  who  have  made 
this  name  of  Oxford  a  name  of  irresistible 
charm.  We  have  entered  into  the  labours 
of  other  men  ;  the  labours  of  schoolmen, 
with  their  gigantic  intellectual  efforts  ;  the 
labours  of  philosophers  and  early  dis¬ 
coverers,  who  prepared  the  materials  and 
opened  the  ways  of  knowledge  ;  the  labours 
of  monks  and  friars>  who  established  schools 
and  nourished  the  principle  of  education  ; 
the  labours  of  preachers,  and  pastors,  and 
reformers,  and  professors  ;  the  benefactions 
of  those  who  have  endowed  us  with  wealth  ; 
and  of  those,  who  are  much  more  important, 
who  have  entrusted  to  us  the  true  riches — 
the  things  that  make  for  the  enlightenment 
of  mind,  and  the  strengthening  of  con¬ 
science,  and  the  sanctifying  of  life.  It  is 


272  SACRIFICE,  THE  GENIUS 

a  great  heritage.  And  we  may  be  quite 
sure  that  if  there  is  any  one  of  us  who  has 
joined  the  society  of  one  of  our  delightful 
colleges,  and  is  bent  on  the  whole  to  make 
it  a  playground,  a  place  of  agreeable  pastime 
and  social  initiation  into  a  comfortable 
position  in  life,  or  to  make  it  a  place  for 
winning  honours  and  seeking  a  name 
among  his  fellows — upon  him  there  rests 
the  curse  of  barrenness  and  of  remorse, 
to  be  realized,  we  may  hope,  before  it  is 
too  late.  The  things  that  come  easy  to 
our  hand  to-day  are  things,  like  our  civil 
and  religious  liberty,  bought  by  the  sweat 
and  blood  of  those  who  have  lived  before  us. 
And  we  may  be  sure  that  whatever  is  noble 
and  generous  in  us  responds  to  this 
appeal :  that  we,  who  have  been  allowed  to 
inherit  these  riches,  material  and  spiritual, 
should  own  that  we  must  use  them  as  a 
trust  from  God.  We  have  been  allowed  to 
appropriate  the  great  heritage — to  become 
fat  on  what  we  did  not  earn — only  that 
we  may  make  the  sacrifice  of  our  own 
lives  full  and  complete,  in  the  name  of 
Him  who  spent  the  glory  of  His  own  being 
in  making  the  idea  of  sacrifice  beautiful 
and  acceptable  to  man’s  heart. 


OF  CHRISTIANITY 


273 


Over  all  our  store  of  possessions,  gathered 
through  the  quiet  and  laborious  and  strug¬ 
gling  centuries  ;  over  all  our  great  fortunes 
and  vast  gains  ;  over  all  our  knowledge 
of  nature  and  man  ;  over  all  our  elaborated 
amusements  ;  over  all  our  aesthetic  subtle¬ 
ties  and  our  mechanical  skill ;  over  all 
that  we  call  our  own ;  within  sight  of  the 
still  crying  needs  of  corrupted  and  down¬ 
trodden  and  feeble  men  and  women  and 
the  child-life  squandered  and  perverted, — 
still  there  falls  the  claim  of  One  who 
pleads  for  abandonment,  for  sacrifice,  if  we 
would  live  and  work  in  His  name  and  with 
His  blessing :  ‘  Whosoever  he  be  of  you 
that  forsaketh  not  ...  he  cannot  be  my 
disciple.' 


18 


SERMON  V 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  1 


And  Jesus  looked  round  about,  and  saith  unto  his  dis¬ 
ciples,  How  hardly  shall  they  that  have  riches  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  God  !  And  the  disciples  were  amazed  at  his 
words.  But  Jesus  answereth  again,  and  saith  unto  them, 
Children,  how  hard  is  it  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God  ! 
It  is  easier  for  a  camel  to  go  through  a  needle’s  eye  than  for  a 
rich  man  to  enter  into  the  kingdom  of  God.  And  they  were 
astonished  exceedingly. — St.  Mark  x.  23-26  (R.V.  marg.). 

These  and  the  like  words  of  our  Lord 
have  stood  over  against  the  church  in  many 
ages  and  many  lands,  convicting  it  of  a 
great  unreality  ;  but  over  against  no 
church  and  in  no  age  have  they  sounded  a 
more  solemn  protest  than  against  our  own 
to-day.  I  shall  need  no  apology  if  I  ask 
for  a  leading  place  in  the  thoughts  of  those 
who  have  assembled  in  this  Congress  of 
Churchmen  for  what  ought  to  be,  I  believe, 
our  chief  anxiety,  our  most  anxious  subject 
of  self-questioning  :  Are  we  of  the  Church 

1  A  sermon  preached  at  the  Church  Congress,  Oct.  2, 
1906,  in  St.  James’s  Church,  Barrow-in-Furness. 

274 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  275 

of  England  to-day  faithful,  as  a  great  body 
of  disciples  should  be,  to  our  Master’s 
teaching  about  wealth  ? 

This  teaching  is  not  a  matter  of  a  few 
words  here  and  there.  It  is  embodied  in 
His  whole  life  and  method.  The  purpose 
of  God  expressed  itself  in  the  circumstances 
of  His  earthly  origin.  As  we  may  rever¬ 
ently  say,  with  all  the  possible  human 
careers  open  before  Him,  the  Father  chose 
for  Him,  and  He  chose,  to  be  born  of  poor 
and  humble  parents  ;  not  to  become  in¬ 
carnate  in  some  position  of  political  power 
or  commanding  influence ;  not  to  have- 
natural  control  of  the  forces  which  make 
up  secular  greatness  ;  nor,  again,  to  appear 
as  a  philosopher  or  to  have  command  of 
the  natural  instruments  for  intellectual 
influence  ;  but  to  be  born  in  circumstances 
least  calculated  to  suggest  power  of  any 
kind — in  a  despised  district  of  a  subject 
kingdom,  just  about  to  become  still  more 
confessedly  subject,  remote  from  the  centres 
of  political  or  intellectual  influence,  and  in 
the  circle  of  labouring  men.  There  is, 
indeed,  nothing  about  our  Lord  which 
suggests  any  love  of  squalor,  or  any  glori¬ 
fication  of  what  we  may  call  the  pauper 


276  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR 

lot.  He  was  born  of  the  seed  of  David  ; 
that  is,  of  a  family  with  noble  memories, 
and  haunted  with  noble  hopes  ;  of  a  family 
in  the  deepest  sense  respectable,  but  of 
the  class  of  artisans  ;  of  the  class  that 
ranked  itself  as  the  poor  over  against  the 
rich.  The  Magnificat  of  Mary  already  gives 
expression  to  the  purpose  of  God  :  f  He 
hath  put  down  the  powerful  off  their 
thrones,  and  exalted  them  of  low  degree  ; 
he  hath  filled  the  hungry  with  good  things, 
and  sent  away  the  rich  empty/ 

Our  Lord,  then,  chose  to  belong  to  the 
class  of  the  honourable  artisan  ;  and,  on 
the  whole.  He  chose  His  apostles  from 
the  same  class.  Again,  there  was  nothing 
squalid  or  disreputable  about  them  or 
their  circumstances.  He  succoured  the 
miserable,  while  He  chose  His  instruments 
from  among  the  morally  excellent  and  the 
respectable  ;  but  from  the  class  accustomed 
to  live  hardly,  and  to  depend  for  sustenance 
upon  daily  labour.  To  this  class  He  gave 
the  prerogative  position  in  His  church. 
It  is  people  of  this  kind  who  can  pray  most 
naturally  the  prayer  to  God  the  Father, 
‘  Give  us  to-day  the  bread  for  the  coming 
day/  And  going  out  into  the  world  with 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  277 

such  associations  and  surroundings,  He 
made  His  deliberate  intention  more  em¬ 
phatic  by  associating  blessedness  with  the  lot 
of  poverty— Blessed  are  ye  poor.’  If  He 
said  also,  ‘  Blessed  are  the  poor  in  spirit  ’ — 
that  is,  those  who  are  detached  from  wealth 
— yet  He  claimed  in  general  that  the  de¬ 
tachment  should  be  made  actual  and  visible. 

He  seems  to  stand  over  against  each 
single  human  soul  which  comes  before  Him 
to  seek  the  position  of  the  disciple,  eliciting, 
claiming,  welcoming,  and  blessing  the  re¬ 
nunciation  of  wealth.  In  various  ways 
and  forms  this  appears  ;  in  His  calling  of 
the  Twelve  away  from  their  professions  ; 
in  the  care  and  awful  earnestness  with 
which  He  warned  them  off  the  first  ap¬ 
proaches  to  ecclesiastical  wealth — this,  I 
think,  is  the  real  meaning  of  the  parable 
of  the  unrighteous  steward,  and  of  other 
plainer  passages  ;  in  the  welcome  He  gave 
to  the  public  renunciation  of  Zaccheus, 
and  to  the  costly  offering  of  Mary  of 
Bethany,  and  to  the  widow’s  sacrifice  of 
her  meagre  ‘  living  ’  ;  in  the  claim  made 
on  the  rich  young  man  who  would  move 
onward  in  the  way  of  perfection—' ‘  Go 
and  sell  all  that  thou  hast  and  give  to  the 


278  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR 

poor  ’  ;  and  in  the  tremendous  warning 
which  followed  his  withdrawal — ‘  How 
hardly  shall  they  that  have  riches  enter 
into  the  kingdom  of  God/  a  warning,  we 
must  remember,  from  which  the  corrected 
texts  have  removed  the  modification,  ‘  How 
hardly  shall  they  that  trust  in  riches.’  It 
is  the  possession  of  riches  which  remains 
the  almost  insuperable  obstacle. 

The  primitive  church  was,  in  its  temper 
and  characteristics,  just  what  we  should 
expect  from  all  this  teaching.  In  the  ever¬ 
lasting  opposition  of  rich  and  poor,  beyond 
all  possibility  of  question,  it  ranked  among, 
and  spoke  for,  the  poor.  It  did  not  so 
much  exalt  the  dignity  of  labour,  as  make 
the  obligation  of  labour  positive  and  abso¬ 
lute  on  all  its  members.  ‘  If  a  man  will 
not  work,  neither  let  him  eat.’  Each  man 
is  to  labour  ‘  with  his  own  hands,’  and  so 
‘  eat  his  own  bread.’  There  is  to  be  support 
for  those  who  cannot  wrork,  but  not  for 
those  vTlo  will  not.  The  Christian  is  to 
be  content  with  the  bare  necessaries  of 
actual  life — ‘  having  food  and  covering.’ 
What  he  earns  over  and  above  this  he 
should  not  accumulate  for  his  own  enjoy¬ 
ment,  but  give  av7ay  ‘  to  him  that  needeth.’ 


/ 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  279 


The  Lord’s  warnings  are  reiterated  upon 
those  who  seek  to  become  rich  men.  They 
can  hardly  escape  perdition.1 

It  is  quite  true  that  the  New  Testament 
does  not  absolutely  condemn  the  mere  pos¬ 
session  of  wealth.  There  is  such  a  phrase 
as  St.  Paul’s,  ‘  I  know  how  to  abound.’ 
A  rich  man,  retaining  possession  of  his 
wealth,  might  have  lived  unrebuked  in 
the  churches  of  St.  Paul,  provided  that  he 
was  treating  his  superfluity  as  a  stewardship 
for  the  common  good.  But  it  is  not  too 
much  to  say  that,  in  spite  of  the  moral 
impartiality  of  the  New  Testament,  in  spite 
of  the  equality  of  its  moral  claim,  its  regular 
assumption  is  that  God  is  on  the  side  of 
the  poor  against  the  rich.  It  does  not, 
indeed,  encourage  the  oppressed  poor  to 
resistance  by  direct  methods.  It  em¬ 
phasizes  the  blessedness  of  submission  to 
injury,  while  it  supplies  the  most  powerful 
remedy  for  injustice  that  the  world  has 
ever  known,  in  the  form  of  a  brotherhood 
of  labour  and  prayer — an  immense  or¬ 
ganization  for  mutual  help.  But  if  it  does 
not  stimulate  to  resistance,  it  associates 
wealth  with  tyranny  and  wrong,  and  un- 

1  1  Tim.  vi.  7. 


280  the  church  and  the  poor 

veils  the  judgement  of  God  upon  the  selfish 
rich  :  ‘  Go  to,  ye  rich  men,  weep  and  howl/ 

‘  Hath  not  God  chosen  them  that  are  poor  ?  ' 
The  late  Master  of  Balliol 1  used  often  to 
say,  in  his  detached  way,  that  he  was 
afraid  there  was  much  more  in  the  New 
Testament  against  being  rich  and  in  favour 
of  being  poor  than  we  liked  to  recognize. 
And  all  the  teaching  which  I  have  tried  to 
summarize,  as  I  believe  without  any  ex¬ 
aggeration,  represents  the  permanent  mind 
of  Him  who  is  our  Master.  It  suggests 
universal  principles,  which  belong  to  all 
states  of  society.  He  is  ‘  the  same  yester¬ 
day,  to-day,  and  for  ever.’  He  is  the  head 

of  the  church — of  our  branch  of  the  church. 

♦ 

He  is  still  speaking  to  the  angel  of  the 
Church  of  England.  We  have  won  vic¬ 
tories  ;  but  they  have  proved  barren.  We 
stand  far  stronger  on  the  merely  intellectual 
or  apologetic  ground  than  we  stood  thirty 
years  ago.  We  have  vindicated  the  liberty 
of  biblical  criticism  and  have  still  the 
weight  of  free  New  Testament  scholarship — 
here  in  England,  at  least — on  the  side  of 
our  creed.  We  have  practically  won  the 
battle  of  the  liberty  of  catholic  ceremonial. 

1  Dr.  Jowett. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  281 

What  is  much  more  important,  we  have 
had  great  revivals  of  spiritual  life  ;  and, 
if  only  there  were  more  driving-power 
behind  our  organizations,  we  should  be  on 
the  way  to  get  rid  of  many  old-standing 
abuses.  The  idea  of  the  church,  free  and 
self-governing,  with  its  great  heritage  of 
truths,  human  and  divine — the  truths  of 
the  Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  brotherhood 
of  man — is  awake  and  alive  again.  We 
understand,  again,  our  great  mission  in 
the  evangelization  of  the  world.  Above  all, 
we  have  laboured  very  hard  for  the  poor 
and  amongst  them.  And  yet — and  yet — 
it  all  hangs  fire.  f  We  have  been  with 
child,  we  have  been  in  pain,  we  have,  as  it 
were,  brought  forth  wind  ;  we  have  not 
wrought  any  deliverance  in  the  earth, 
neither  have  the  inhabitants  of  the  world 
fallen/  ‘  Surely  I  have  laboured  in  vain 
and  spent  my  strength  for  naught  !  ’  Such 
a  feeling  is  in  the  mind  of  very  many  of  us 
as  we  take  stock  of  the  powerlessness  of 
the  church,  in  spite  of  even  splendid  ex¬ 
ceptions  in  this  or  that  parish,  to  produce 
any  broad,  corporate  effect,  to  make  any 
effective  spiritual  appeal  by  its  own  proper 
influence,  in  the  great  democracy  of  England 


282  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR 

to-day.  We  are  not  in  touch  with  the 
mass  of  the  labouring  people. 

Is  not  the  reason  of  this  because  we  are 
the  church  of  the  rich  rather  than  of  the 
poor — of  Capital  rather  than  of  Labour  ? 
By  this  I  mean  that  in  the  strata  of  society 
the  church  works  from  above  rather  than 
from  below.  The  opinions  and  the  pre¬ 
judices  that  are  associated  with  its  ad¬ 
ministration  as  a  whole  are  the  opinions 
and  the  prejudices  of  the  higher  and  upper- 
middle  classes,  rather  than  of  the  wage- 
earners.  This  becomes  the  more  apparent 
if  you  contrast  the  Church  of  England 
in  this  respect  with  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  Ireland  or  with  the  Presbyterian 
Churches  of  Scotland — at  least  as  they  have 
stood,  up  to  the  rise  of  the  vast  industrial 
cities,  like  Glasgow  or  Dundee,  where  I 
suppose  that  ‘  labour  ’  stands  as  much 
aloof  from  any  existing  religious  organiza¬ 
tion  as  in  our  English  cities. 

But  I  return  to  the  Church  of  England, 
and  to  our  confessed  failure  to  be  the 
church  of  the  people  in  an  effective  sense 
in  town  or  country.  It  is,  I  believe,  the 
chief  test  of  the  vitality  of  a  church  of 
Christ  in  any  country  that  it  should  repre- 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  283 

sent  the  poor,  the  wage-earners,  those  who 
live  by  manual  labour ;  that  it  should  be 
a  community  in  which  religion  works  up¬ 
ward  from  below.  There  is  our  great 
failure.  In  the  older  feudal  constitution 
of  things  in  the  country,  or  in  the  older 
industrial  period  in  the  towns,  when  the 
masters  lived  surrounded  by  their  ‘  hands,’ 
it  might  have  been  supposed  possible  for 
a  church  specially  identified  with  the  point 
of  view  of  the  then  governing  classes  still 
to  be  the  church  of  the  whole  community. 
But  the  state  of  things  has  passed  away. 
Capital  and  Labour  are  names  now  for  great 
class  interests  and  organizations  represent¬ 
ing  men  in  masses,  and  the  church  finds 
itself  in  fact,  and  on  the  whole,  moving  in 
the  grooves  which  are  precisely  those  from 
which  Christ  warned  us  off ;  it  finds  itself 
expressing  the  point  of  view  which  is 
precisely  not  that  which  Christ  chose  for 
His  church. 

Can  this  be  doubted  ?  Let  us  judge  by 
the  officers  of  the  church.  The  incomes 
of  the  bishops  range  us,  and  are  meant  to 
range  us,  in  our  manner  of  life,  with  the 
wealthier  classes,  the  squires  or  magnates 
of  the  county,  the  great  merchants  of  the 


284  the  church  and  the  poor 

towns,  with  whom  all  our  education  has 
accustomed  us  to  associate  and  to  feel. 
Our  incumbents  and  clergy,  with  their 
wives  and  families,  have  their  natural 
friends  among  the  gentry  or  professional 
classes.  It  is  quite  rare  to  find  an  artisan 
or  his  wife  really  at  home  with  the  clergy. 
At  every  point  we  find  ourselves  depending 
upon  the  support  of  the  capitalist.  Our 
whole  system  of  church  charity  expresses 
a  bounty  administered  out  of  benevolent 
feeling,  by  a  wealth  which  makes  no  apology 
for  enjoying  itself,  to  a  poverty  which  it 
makes  no  pretence  to  share.  Our  church 
meetings  for  counsel  only  rarely,  even  in 
parishes,  much  more  rarely  in  rural 
deaneries,  never  in  Houses  of  Laymen  or 
Church  Congresses,  discover  or  express  the 
point  of  view  of  the  artisan,  except  by  an 
exceptional  effort  made  for  a  particular 
occasion.  Committees  of  church  ladies  for 
all  sorts  of  purposes  acquiesce  in  an  attitude 
of  patronage  towards  the  wife  of  the 
artisan,  even  more  markedly  than  com¬ 
mittees  of  church  laymen.  The  arrange¬ 
ments  of  the  great  majority  of  our  churches 
in  country  and  town,  in  spite  of  the  quite 
unmistakable  language  of  St.  James,  and, 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  285 

I  must  add,  in  startling  contrast  to  the 
churches  of  Roman  Catholic  Europe  in 
almost  all  parts — give  a  marked  preference 
to  the  well-off. 

I  have  said  before  that,  with  all  this,  we 
have  laboured  very  hard  for  the  poor  and 
amongst  them.  At  the  hand  of  Him  who 
said,  ‘  Inasmuch  as  ye  have  done  it  unto 
one  of  the  least  of  these  my  brethren,  ye 
have  done  it  unto  me/  there  is  laid  up  a 
rich  store  of  benediction  for  men  and 
women,  priests  and  laymen  innumerable, 
whose  unselfish,  unremitting,  unrequited 
toil  is  really  known  only  in  the  heart  of  our 
Lord.  That  is  our  real  comfort.  We  are 
sure  that  all  this  labour  will  not  be  in  vain. 
It  ,  as  it  were,  authorizes  us  to  claim  illu¬ 
mination  and  guidance  in  reversing  the 
great  wrong  and  in  averting  the  great 
judgement,  or  rather  it  authorizes  us  to 
claim  strength  to  make  the  right  use  of 
divine  chastisements.  But  meanwhile  the 
facts  are  as  I  have  stated  them.  I  hardly 
think  the  truth  of  what  I  have  been  saying 
can  be  denied  on  the  whole.  The  question 
which  ought  to  hold  a  prerogative  place 
in  the  interests  of  churchmen  is,  how  we 
are  to  return  to  a  condition  of  things  nearer 


286  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR 

to  the  intention  of  Christ — if  it  may  be, 
without  violence  or  revolution,  but,  if  not, 
then  anyhow  to  return. 

But  this — suggestion  of  remedies — is  not 
the  first  thing.  The  first  thing  is  that  we 
should,  in  the  whole  bulk  of  the  church, 
feel  and  acknowledge,  in  deep  penitence, 
that  we  are  on  wrong  lines,  so  that  at 
present  our  very  victories  must  prove 
barren.  This  sermon  is  only  the  cry  of  a 
permanently  troubled  conscience  which  can¬ 
not  see  its  way.  Certainly  no  one  has  a 
right  to  speak  with  any  degree  of  self- 
satisfaction  or  contemptuously  of  others’ 
failures.  The  worst  feature  of  the  present 
‘  catholic  movement  ’  in  the  Church  of 
England  is  that  its  more  prominent  organs 
and  representatives  seem  to  be  so  ready 
to  speak  scornfully  of  others,  and  so  little 
conscious  of  the  failure  of  the  catholic 
movement  really,  on  any  considerable  scale, 
to  do  the  proper  work  of  a  Christian  church 
by  becoming  identified  with  the  working 
people.  Meanwhile,  we  may  trustfully  feel 
that  the  work  which  has  been  done  so 
zealously  and  faithfully  for  the  poor  gives 
us  the  best  ground  for  expecting  an  answer 
to  our  penitent  prayers. 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  287 

I  have  no  time  to  do  more  than  barely 
enumerate  what  seem  to  me  to  be  some 
lines  of  hopeful  recovery. 

1.  First  of  all,  I  would  say,  the  church 
must  set  itself  deliberately  and  of  set 
purpose,  as  far  as  possible,  to  get  rid  of 
the  administration  of  poor  relief.  We  must 
deliberately  set  ourselves  to  dissociate  the 
administration  of  relief  from  the  ministry 
of  the  word  and  sacraments,  and  to  asso¬ 
ciate  it  with  the  state,  the  municipality, 
and  voluntary  organizations  of  citizens  on 
a  purely  secular  basis.  Our  Lord’s  and  His 
apostles’  miraculous  ministries  of  help  to 
the  sick  and  needy  afford  very  little  analogy 
for  our  present  methods.  You  know  the 
famous  story  of  the  Pope,  luxuriating  in 
the  wealth  of  his  Jubilee-offering,  and 
saying  to  the  saint  by  his  side,  ‘  Peter 
cannot  say  now,  “  Silver  and  gold  have  I 
none,”  ’  and  how  the  saint  replied,  ‘No, 
your  Blessedness  ;  neither  can  he  say  now, 
“  In  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ,  rise  up  and 
walk.”  ’  The  church  can  do  its  utmost  to 
relieve  the  poor  in  any  way  love  can  sug¬ 
gest,  if  it  be  itself  poor  and  of  the  poor. 
But  where  the  charity  of  the  church  is 
understood  to  mean  the  patronage  of  the 


\ 


288  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR 

rich,  it  can  do  nothing  without  disaster. 
I  am  quite  sure  that  our  first  and  most 
necessary  step  towards  regaining  our  right¬ 
ful  place  in  the  regard  of  labour  is  to  take 
the  administration  of  relief-money  almost 
altogether  out  of  the  hands  of  our  clergy 
and  church-workers,  and  to  let  it  be  so 
administered,  and  by  such  hands,  as  that 
none  may  think  they  can  either  merit  it  or 
lose  it  by  attendance  or  failure  to  attend 
at  the  services  of  the  church.  It  is  not 
possible  to  exaggerate  how  alienating  an 
effect  upon  exactly  that  type  of  independent 
labour  on  which  our  Lord  most  relied,  is 
exercised  by  our  present  system  of  ad¬ 
ministering  alms.  Here,  then,  is  one  of 
the  first  and  most  necessary  steps  of  our 
redemption,  and  till  this  is  taken  all  else 
will  be  in  vain — I  mean,  till  it  has  ceased 
to  be  a  plausible  taunt  that  a  man  or 
woman  goes  to  church  for  what  can  be  got. 

2.  Secondly,  we  want  to  make  the  most 
of  what  we  have  already.  We  have  a 
really  considerable  body  of  communicants 
who  are  artisans  ;  but  we  need  to  give 
them  their  true  place  and  influence,  and 
to  mass  them,  so  that  their  corporate 
effect  shall  tell.  We  must  prevent  the 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  289 

parishioners  of  poor  parishes  being  ousted, 
or  put  into  a  secondary  place,  by  those 
who  come  from  outside.  We  must  dili¬ 
gently  consult  their  tastes  and  convenience 
in  respect  of  the  services,  hours,  and 
arrangements.  We  must  do  our  utmost 
to  let  them  feel  that  the  management  of 
church  affairs  is  in  their  hands.  In  matters 
not  belonging  to  the  church’s  essential 
order,  their  mistakes  are  likely  to  be  more 
profitable  than  wiser  judgements  which  are 
not  yet  their  own.  We  must  take  the  most 
serious  pains  to  bring  it  about  that  they 
shall  be  represented,  in  sufficient  number 
to  make  them  feel  at  home,  in  ruridecanal 
meetings,  and  then,  gradually,  in  diocesan 
assemblies  and  in  the  Houses  of  Laymen. 

3.  To  do  all  this  safely,  we  must  act  on 
the  basis  of  a  true  sacerdotalism.  The 
ministerial  priesthood  is  in  charge  of  the 
word  and  sacraments.  It  is  the  duty  of 
the  priesthood  to  maintain  unflinchingly  the 
catholic  heritage  ;  to  suffer  no  tampering 
with  those  things  which  catholic  authority 
has  laid  down,  or  the  authority  of  our 
own  part  of  the  church.  But,  after  all, 
many  of  our  characteristic  arrangements 
stand,  not  by  catholic  authority,  but  by 

*9 


290  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR 

the  force  of  use  and  wont,  and  pure,  un¬ 
reasoning  conservatism.  And  it  is  part  of 
a  true  sacerdotalism  that  the  clergy  should 
help  every  confirmed  person  to  claim  his 
or  her  place  in  the  priestly  body,  and 
should  learn  to  act,  or  at  least  sincerely 
desire  to  act  (how  far  we  are  yet  off  that  !) 
on  the  apostolic  pattern — ‘  It  is  not  meet 
that  we  should  leave  the  word  of  God  to 
serve  tables.  .  .  .  We  will  give  ourselves 
to  prayer  and  to  the  ministry  of  the  word/ 
To  be  effective  ministers  of  the  word  and 
sacraments — that  is  the  special  business  of 
the  clergy.  Here  we  have  entrusted  to 
us  the  principles  and  the  instruments  of 
the  true  socialism,  and  the  safeguards 
against  the  false  and  misleading  socialism 
which  ignores  the  fact  of  sin  and  the  need 
of  personal  redemption.  Oh  !  how  differ¬ 
ent  would  be  the  position  of  the  church 
if  we  clergy  would  sacrifice  everything  to 
concentrate  ourselves  upon  really  bringing 
out  the  social  meaning  of  our  sacraments, 
upon  really  understanding  and  giving  voice 
to  the  spirit  of  Christian  brotherhood, 
upon  really  making  ourselves  the  organs 
for  expressing  social  justice  and  uttering 
effectively  the  divine  wrath  upon  all  that 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  291 

degrades  and  crushes  the  weak  and  igno¬ 
rant  and  poor !  Oh  !  how  different  would 
be  our  moral  appeal  if  Christ’s  claim  upon 
wealth — Christ’s  claim  for  great  sacrifices, 
great  abandonments,  as  the  normal  ex¬ 
hibitions  of  a  converted  heart — were  really 
once  again  the  claim  of  the  actual  church 
upon  the  clergy  and  laity ! 

In  all  this  I  am  only  asking  that  we  should, 
in  penitence  and  prayer,  give  ourselves  to 
teaching  the  faith  and  practice  of  Christen¬ 
dom  as  it  is  in  the  Bible.  How  quickly,  then, 
would  many  of  the  questions  which  now 
bulk  biggest  as  *  church  questions  ’  take 
a  very  subordinate  place  ! 

Truly  we  have  protected  the  letter  of 
Scripture,  while  its  spirit  of  judgement  and 
justice  was  being  ignored  ;  we  have  con¬ 
tended  for  ceremonial  liberty,  while  the 
fundamental  meaning  of  our  sacraments 
of  brotherhood  was  being  parodied  by 
a  miserable  religious  selfishness. 

4.  Once  more,  we  must  dissociate  the 
clergy  from  being  identified  with  the 
wealthier  classes.  We  who  know  may  say 
much  to  palliate  the  scale  of  our  episcopal 
incomes.  But  nothing  we  can  ever  say 
will  obliterate  the  false  impression  which 


292  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR 

our  present  system  makes  upon  the  imagi¬ 
nation  of  the  classes  of  labour.  It  would 
be  an  immense  improvement  if  the  bishop 
received  a  very  much  smaller  personal 
salary,  with  allowances  for  official  expenses, 
and  with  a  fund  for  diocesan  objects  put 
at  his  disposal,  of  which  he  should  give 
public  account. 

With  the  mass  of  benefieed  and  un¬ 
beneficed  clergy  there  is  at  least  no  difficulty 
from  excess  of  income.  What  we  want  to 
do  is  to  gain,  what  we  at  present  largely 
lose,  the  moral  advantages  of  small  in¬ 
comes.  We  need,  and  we  are,  thank  God, 
realizing  the  need,  to  lay  open  the  way 
to  holy  orders  to  promising  young  men 
of  every  class.  We  must  provide  for  their 
receiving,  fully  and  adequately,  an  educa¬ 
tion  liberal  and  theological.  What  we 
want  to  secure  is  that,  while  we  train 
their  minds  and  characters,  we  should 
not  suffer  those  of  them  who  are  sons  of 
working  parents  to  lose  in  the  process  the 
sympathies  and  tastes  of  the  best  of  those 
amongst  whom  they  had  their  origin.  We 
want  to  secure,  so  far  as  we  can,  that 
when  they  are  ordained,  their  houses  and 
their  tables  shall  be  such  that  those  of  the 


THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR  293 

class  they  come  from  should  feel  themselves 
at  home  with  them,  as  they  do  with  the 
clergy  of  some  other  countries.  We  want 
utterly  to  rid  ourselves,  as  of  a  shameful 
thing,  of  the  sense  that  a  clergyman  whose 
original  home  was  a  workman's  home 
should  desire  to  conceal  it.  There  is  no 
reason  in  the  world,  if  there  were  but  more 
of  the  Christian  spirit  among  Churchmen, 
why  our  clerical  estate  should  not  come  to 
be  utterly  freed  from  the  association  of 
class.  The  real  remedy  for  the  evils  sup¬ 
posed  to  be  incidental  to  such  a  state  of 
things  lies  in  the  requirement  of  an  ade¬ 
quate  training  before  ordination. 

‘  These  things  are  difficult.  Such  funda¬ 
mental  social  changes  are  hard  to  bring 
about.  We  are  an  unimaginative  and  con¬ 
servative  people.'  True,  quite  true.  But 
the  beginnings  are  in  prayer  and  penitence 
and  right  desire,  and  in  giving  the  first 
place  in  our  minds  and  counsels  to  the 
matters  that  are  really  of  first  importance. 
Meanwhile  we  must  all  continue  to  do  our 
best  in  the  states  of  life  into  which  it  has 
pleased,  or  shall  please,  God  to  call  us. 

When  our  Lord  came  into  the  world  as 
man  He  found  the  ecclesiastics  of  His  time 


294  THE  CHURCH  AND  THE  POOR 

and  the  church  parties  of  His  time  occupied 
upon  the  wrong  problems,  intent  upon  the 
wrong  subjects  of  thought,  or  at  least 
putting  them  in  the  wrong  order.  They 
were  conservative  of  things  as  they  were. 
Their  eyes  were  not  open  to  fresh  light. 
Thus,  seeking  their  own  righteousness,  they 
refused  to  submit  themselves  to  the  right¬ 
eousness  of  God. 

May  God  give  us  grace,  us  who  are  the 
representatives  of  the  church  of  God  in 
this  land  to-day,  not  so  to  excuse  ourselves, 
by  the  pleas  of  natural  conservatism  and 
natural  disposition,  as  to  miss  His  funda¬ 
mental  message  for  us  in  our  time ! 


APPENDIX 


295 


MORAL  WITNESS  OF  THE  CHURCH 
ON  ECONOMIC  SUBJECTS 

A  REPORT  PRESENTED  TO  THE  HOUSES 
OF  CONVOCATION  OF  CANTERBURY  BY 
A  JOINT  COMMITTEE  (April  16,  1907) 1 

The  subject  with  which  your  Committee  was  specially 
appointed  to  deal,  viz.  the  moral  witness  which  the 
Church  ought  to  bear  against  certain  misuses  of 
money,  seemed  to  us  to  require,  as  a  preliminary, 
some  more  general  consideration  of  those  positive 
principles  involved  in  the  production,  accumulation, 
and  distribution  of  wealth  which  are  properly  Christian 
and  in  the  light  of  which  current  practices  must  be 
judged. 

Accordingly,  a  Sub-Committee  was  appointed  which 
sought  and  received  communications  from  a  number 
of  students  of  Christian  ethics  and  of  current 
economics,  and  from  some  business  men  and  others 
interested  in  social  reform.  Others  allowed  the 
Sub-Committee  to  receive  them  and  ask  them  ques¬ 
tions.  On  the  basis  of  these  communications,  written 
and  oral,  the  following  report  has  been  drawn  up, 
and  is  presented. 

1  This  Report  must  be  taken  as  having  the  authority 
only  of  the  Committee  by  which  it  was  prepared.  (Sold 
by  S.P.C.K.  and  National  Society.) 

297 


298  MORAL  WITNESS  OF  THE 


I.  The  Changes  in  the  Economic  View. — There  is 
no  doubt  that  the  change  which  of  recent  years  has 
come  over  the  attitude  of  economists  towards  ethical 
questions  gives  the  Christian  Church  a  fresh  oppor¬ 
tunity.  The  old  political  economy  thought  it  neces¬ 
sary  to  isolate  the  study  of  the  production  and 
distribution  of  wealth  ;  to  deal  with  it  as  if  no 
motive  were  to  be  admitted  into  this  economic  region 
except  the  selfish  desire  of  the  individual  to  enrich 
himself.  Abstract  laws  of  supply  and  demand,  in 
combination  with  a  certain  theory  of  population 
(Malthus),  were  supposed  to  rule  out  in  the  scientific 
treatment  of  commerce  and  industry  all  questions 
of  justice  and  mercy  to  the  wage-earners,  and  all 
moral  considerations  in  the  relations  between  em¬ 
ployers  and  employed.  An  economic  world  was 
postulated  in  which  there  was  nothing  but  individuals, 
each  free  to  pursue,  and  certain  to  pursue,  his  own 
interest.  But,  abstract  and  hypothetical  as  this 
economic  science  professed  to  be,  it  ministered  un¬ 
doubtedly  to  the  common  human  tendency  to  regard 
commercial  and  economic  dealings  as  outside  the 
control  of  morality  and  religion.  And  in  spite  of 
the  protests  of  some  deep-seeing  men  (Carlyle, 
Maurice,  Ruskin),  the  Christian  Church  allowed  itself 
to  be  silenced  by  the  terrors  of  supposed  inexorable 
laws. 

But  a  great  change  has  passed  over  economics, 
most  of  all  in  Germany,  but  also  in  other  countries, 
including  England.  It  has  been  found  that  the 
abstract  science  was  too  abstract  to  be  applicable 
to  facts.  A  man,  though  engaged  in  making  his 
living  or  his  fortune,  still  remains  a  man,  influenced 


CHURCH  ON  ECONOMIC  SUBJECTS  299 

by  manifold  passions,  prejudices,  and  feelings,  which 
in  countless  ways  disturb  the  action  of  the  purely 
economic  motive,  or  the  desire  to  buy  in  the  cheapest 
and  sell  in  the  dearest  market.  Moreover,  the 
majority  of  men  are  found  to  be  not  free  to  bargain, 
or  to  pursue  their  own  interests.  They  are  too 
weak  and  ignorant.  They  cannot  move  freely. 
They  are  exploited  by  the  strong.  This  very  weak¬ 
ness  and  ignorance  is  in  itself  an  economic  loss.  The 
‘  cheapest  ’  labour  proves  to  be  often  the  dearest. 
For  the  truly  cheapest  labour  (in  the  long  run)  is 
the  most  efficient  labour  ;  and  experience  is  now 
showing  that,  in  far  more  cases  than  might  be  sup¬ 
posed,  the  gain  in  the  efficiency  of  the  workman,  which 
follows  upon  such  an  improvement  in  his  standard 
of  living  as  secures  for  him  better  food  and  more 
wholesome  surroundings,  more  than  outweighs  the 
additional  cost. 

Wealth  again  is  more  clearly  recognized  by  the 
present  generation  of  economists  to  be  a  means 
rather  than  an  end.  Mere  production  of  material 
commodities  is  not  considered  as  the  matter  of  chief 
importance.  The  real  end  of  industrial  organization 
is  to  combine  efficient  production  with  such  a  dis¬ 
tribution  of  the  commodities  produced,  as  will 
enable  the  greatest  number  of  people  to  find  a  full 
opportunity  of  self-realization  and  joy.  The  true 
riches  of  a  nation  are  vigorous  and  happy  men  and 
women,  willingly  and  intelligently  co-operating  for 
the  good  of  the  community. 

II.  Christian  Principles  of  Society. — An  economic 
science  which  exhibits  this  new  tendency  is  no  longer 
an  antagonist  to  Christian  principles.  Christianity 


3° o 


MORAL  WITNESS  OF  THE 


can  breathe  freely  again  in  the  atmosphere  which  it 
generates.  For  what  are  the  fundamental  social 
principles  of  Christianity  ?  We  may  state  them  as 
follows  :  First  of  all,  Christianity  inherited  from 
the  Old  Testament  certain  social  principles,  in  part 
embodied  in  the  Law  and  in  part  enforced  by  the 
prophets  and  moralists.  Thus  we  find  in  the  Old 
Testament  a  profound  regard  for  the  poor  and  help¬ 
less  (widows  and  orphans),1  a  reiterated  denuncia¬ 
tion  of  those  who  exact  their  labour  without 
paying  them  a  sufficient  wage.2  *  The  Lord  will 
enter  into  judgement  with  the  elders  of  his  people, 
and  the  princes  thereof  :  It  is  ye  that  have  eaten 
up  the  vineyard  ;  the  spoil  of  the  poor  is  in  your 
houses.  What  mean  ye  that  ye  crush  my  people, 
and  grind  the  face  of  the  poor  ?  saith  the  Lord,  the 
Lord  of  Hosts.’ 3  The  tendency  of  the  legislation 
was  to  raise  the  status  of  the  Israelite  slave  to  that 
of  the  hired  workman,  who  was  to  be  treated  as  a 
‘  brother.’  4 * 

We  find  a  prohibition  of  usury  between  Israelite 
and  Israelite  6 ;  and  provision  is  taken  against  the 

1  Amos  v.  12  ;  Isa.  i.  17,  23,  x.  2  ;  Jer.  vii.  5  f.,  xxii.  3  ; 
Deut.  x.  18,  xxiv.  17  f.,  xxvii.  19. 

2  Deut.  xxiv.  14  f.  ;  Jer.  xxii.  13;  Lev.  xix.  13; 
Mai.  iii.  5. 

3  Isa.  iii.  14,  15. 

4  Hastings’  Diet.  iv.  465  ;  cf.  Lev.  xxv.  39  f. 

6  Exod.  xxii.  25  f.  ;  Lev.  xxv.  35-37.  This  was  in 
the  Old  Testament  a  provision  for  the  protection  of  the 
poor.  There  is  no  reference  to  it  in  the  New  Testament, 
nor  need  we  enter  into  the  later  discussions  on  the 

subject. 


CHURCH  ON  ECONOMIC  SUBJECTS  3OI 

permanent  alienation  of  the  land  1  ;  various  enact¬ 
ments  protect  labour — e.g.  the  danger  of  falling  from 
a  roof  is  to  be  averted  by  a  railing.2  The  general 
well-being  is  a  supreme  consideration,  restricting 
the  selfish  acquisition  of  wealth.  Luxury  is  de¬ 
nounced.3 4  Manual  labour  is  held  in  honour  ;  it  is 
the  necessary  basis  of  all  society ;  the  labourers 
‘  maintain  the  fabric  of  the  age  ;  and  in  the  handi¬ 
work  of  their  craft  is  their  prayer  ’ — i.e.  for  them 
labor  are  est  or  are.* 

Christianity  did  not  take  over  the  formal  legisla¬ 
tion  of  the  Old  Testament,  but  it  did  inherit  its  moral 
principles,  *  which  J  esus  Christ  deepened  and  uni¬ 
versalized.  The  ‘  neighbour  '  to  whom  we  owe  duty 
is  now  not  the  fellow  member  of  the  Jewish  race, 
but  it  is  every  man  who  has  need,  though  in  a  special 
sense  the  fellow-Christian.  The  Christian  is  ‘  to 
love  his  neighbour  as  himself  ’ ;  that  is,  he  is  not  to 
regard  any  other  person  as  an  instrument  for  his  own 
advantage,  but  to  consider  his  brother’s  interest  and 
well-being,  as  he  considers  his  own.  This  is  the  law 
of  love.  Moreover,  Christianity  assigns  to  every 
individual  soul  or  life  an  absolute  and  infinite  worth 
which  makes  it  once  for  all  impossible  to  sanction 
any  one  being  treated  as  a  mere  means  to  another’s 

1  Lev.  xxv.  10,  13  ;  cf.  Isa.  v.  8,  against  the  accumula¬ 
tion  of  the  land  in  a  few  hands. 

2  Deut.  xxii.  8.  The  regulation  about  sanitation  in 
the  camp  is  interesting.  Deut.  xxiii.  12-14. 

3  Amos  iii.  15,  vi.  1  f. 

4  Ecclus.  xxxviii.  24-34. 

6  e.g.  S.  James  takes  up  the  language  of  the  Old 
Testament  prophets  about  wealth  and  wages  (v.  1-5). 


302 


MORAL  WITNESS  OF  THE 


end.  The  Christian  society  is  a  body  in  which  the 
interest  of  the  whole  and  of  every  part  is  the  governing 
law  for  every  member.  The  Christian  ethic  is  thus 
essentially  social.  And  a  special  reverence  is  due  to 
the  helpless  and  weak.  They  are  the  ‘  little  ones  ’ 
whom  we  are  not  to  offend.  Christ  died  for  the 
weak,  as  for  the  strong  ;  and  1  there  is  no  respect  of 
persons  with  God.’  Moreover,  all  the  members  of 
the  body,  whether  more  or  less  important,  depend 
one  on  another,  and  the  suffering  of  any  member 
of  the  body  is  the  concern  of  all.1  Thus  the  law  of 
the  Christian’s  life  is  the  service  of  the  brethren.  He 
is  set  ‘  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister/ 
His  aim  is  to  serve,  not  to  get  as  much  as  he  can  for 
himself.  There  lies  upon  each  one  the  duty  of  work, 
that  he  may  ‘  eat  his  own  bread/  3  Indeed,  St.  Paul 
states  the  law  sharply  :  ‘  If  a  man  will  not  work, 

neither  let  him  eat/  Moreover,  work  is  regarded 
as  a  means  of  co-operating  with  a  divine  purpose 
of  love.  It  is  not  to  be  a  means  for  the  selfish  ac¬ 
cumulation  of  wealth.  The  individual  wants  are 
to  be  sternly  restricted.  Luxury  is  no  more  allowed 
than  idleness.  Stern  warnings  are  uttered  regarding 
the  pursuit  of  riches.3  Each  is  to  work  with  his  own 
hands  that  he  may  support  the  weak,4  or  that  he 
may  ‘  have  to  give  to  him  that  needeth/ 5 

It  is  true  that  all  this  social  conception  regards 
primarily  the  Christian  body,  ‘  the  brethren/  But 
there  are  indications  in  the  New  Testament  itself  that 
it  is  to  be  extended  to  society  at  large.  The  Christian 

1  i  Cor.  xii.  22-27.  4  Acts  xx.  35. 

2  2  Thess.  iii.  10-13.  6  Eph*  iv.  28. 

3  1  Tim.  vi.  8-10. 


CHURCH  ON  ECONOMIC  SUBJECTS  303 


is  to  ‘  honour  all  men,’  as  well  as  to  *  love  the 
brotherhood  ’  ;  the  ‘  love  of  the  brethren  ’  is  to 
extend  itself  into  universal  ‘  love.' 1  The  State, 
as  well  as  the  Church,  is  regarded  as  a  divine 
institution,  even  though  Pagan  2 ;  its  ministers  are 
God’s  ministers  ;  and  the  idea  of  public  spirit  is 
thus  extended  (so  far  as  circumstances  allow)  from 
the  Church  to  the  State. 

We  are  persuaded  that  in  the  effective  reassertion 
of  such  Christian  principles  lies  the  present  opportunity 
of  the  Church  and  one  of  its  chief  duties  as  a  witness 
for  Christ.  We  are  persuaded  that  some  of  the 
matters  which  have  held,  and  still  hold,  the  first  place 
in  ecclesiastical  or  clerical  interest  are  such  as  the 
New  Testament  would  lead  us  to  believe  to  be  of 
quite  minor  importance.  We  are  further  persuaded 
that  the  idea  of  individual  salvation  has  been  dis¬ 
astrously  isolated  in  Christian  teaching  and  in 
current  Christian  belief  from  the  social  idea  of  original 
Christianity  and  the  teaching  of  brotherhood.  It 
was  largely  because  the  Church  appeared  as  a  society 
making  the  welfare  of  all  its  members  its  controlling 
principle  in  the  acquisition  and  distribution  of  wealth, 
that  it  made  the  great  progress  which  history  records 
in  the  world  of  the  Roman  Empire.3  That  at  least 
was  one  of  the  chief  factors  of  the  impression  which 
it  made  upon  men’s  hearts  and  consciences.  In  our 
day  it  appears  that  the  re-enforcement  of  the  obliga¬ 
tions  of  brotherhood  is  what  is  needed  to  rekindle 

1  1  Pet.  ii.  17  ;  2  Pet.  i.  7. 

2  Rom.  xiii.  ;  1  Tim.  ii.  1,  2  ;  1  Pet.  ii.  13-17. 

3  See,  for  instance,  Harnack’s  Expansion  of  Christianity , 
vol.  i.,  pp.  183-249. 


304 


MORAL  WITNESS  OF  THE 


among  the  mass  of  the  workers  the  perception  of  the 
supreme  worth  of  Christianity. 

But  apart  altogether  from  such  questions  of  present 
opportunity,  the  Christian  doctrines  of  the  Father¬ 
hood  of  God  and  of  the  Incarnation  imply  the  teaching 
of  brotherhood  with  all  its  social  consequences.  The 
Christian  cannot  fail  to  recognize  that  Christ,  our 
Master  and  our  severe  Judge,  holds  us  responsible 
for  every  one  of  His  members  whose  life  has  been 
wasted  by  our  common  neglect. 

III.  The  Duty  of  the  Christian  as  an  Individual. — 
In  view,  then,  of  the  economic  change  described  above 
and  of  the  Christian  principles  of  society  which  we 
have  endeavoured  to  indicate,  what  are  the  matters  to 
which  the  moral  witness  of  the  Church  should  be 
specially  directed  at  the  present  time  ? 

In  part  what  is  needed  is  that  the  Church  should 
teach  the  individual  his  duty  to  his  neighbour  more 
completely,  and  with  more  reference  to  actual  con¬ 
ditions.  We  have  heard  too  much  of  the  rights  of 
property.  We  have  heard  enough  of  the  duties  of 
property  towards  the  Church  in  its  narrower 
sense.  But  we  have  heard  too  little  (from  the 
authorized  Christian  teacher)  of  the  fundamental 
Christian  principles  in  respect  of  ‘  getting  ’  and 
*  spending.’ 

The  duty  of  the  Christian  as  an  individual  may 
be  considered  in  three  ways  ;  he  may  be  regarded 
(i)  as  a  worker,  (2)  as  a  capitalist  and  employer, 
and  (3)  as  a  consumer. 

(1)  The  Church  should  declare  that  the  first  duty 
of  the  Christian,  whatever  may  be  his  circumstances, 
is  that  of  work ;  for  every  man  according  to  his 


CHURCH  ON  ECONOMIC  SUBJECTS  305 


ability  must  contribute  by  his  service  to  the  common 
well-being.  Idleness,  whether  it  is  that  of  the  rich 
or  the  poor  man,  is  an  offence  against  God  and  man. 
And  by  work  we  ought  to  mean  the  sincere  applica¬ 
tion  of  all  the  man's  faculties  to  his  business  ‘  in 
that  state  of  life  unto  which  it  shall  please  God  to 
call  him.’  The  shirker  and  the  trifler  in  any  class 
of  society  are  men  who  have  failed  to  recognize  the 
claim  of  God  upon  them. 

(2)  The  Church  should  teach  that  the  Christian 
who  is  an  owner  of  property  must  recognize  that, 
whether  he  has  inherited  or  acquired  it,  he  holds  it 
as  a  sacred  trust.  He  has  indeed,  for  good  or  evil,  as 
society  is  now  organized,  legal  authority,  within 
certain  limits,  over  the  manner  in  which  it  is  used, 
but  before  God  his  authority  is  that  of  a  trustee  for 
society,  not  of  an  absolute  owner. 

And  especially,  the  owner  of  property  as  an  em¬ 
ployer  must  remember  that  he  is  responsible  for  the 
conditions  under  which  his  business  is  carried  on. 
The  Christian  Church  which  holds  that  the  individual 
life  is  sacred,  must  teach  that  it  is  intolerable  to  it 
that  any  part  of  our  industry  should  be  organized 
upon  the  foundation  of  the  misery  and  want  of  the 
labourer.  The  fundamental  Christian  principle  of 
the  remuneration  of  labour  is  that  the  first  charge 
upon  any  industry  must  be  the  proper  maintenance 
of  the  labourer — an  idea  which  it  has  been  sought  to 
express  in  popular  language  by  the  phrase  ‘  the 
living  wage.’ 

The  Church  should  also  urge  upon  its  members  the 
moral,  as  distinct  from  the  legal  obligation,  of  pro¬ 
viding  and  making  efficient  whatever  in  the  way  of 

20 


MORAL  WITNESS  OF  THE 


306 

apparatus  or  arrangements  is  necessary  to  safeguard 
the  life  and  health  of  the  worker. 

(3)  The  Church  should  teach  the  moral  responsibility 
of  the  consumer  ;  that  is,  that  no  Christian  has  the 
right  to  demand  commodities  at  a  price  which  he 
knows,  or  can  ascertain,  to  be  incompatible  with  the 
adequate  remuneration  of  the  workers  and  proper 
conditions  of  industry ;  or,  again,  by  deferring  pay¬ 
ment,  to  render  it  more  difficult  to  secure  these  objects. 

But  in  carrying  out  such  ideas  of  a  man’s  duty  the 
individual  by  himself  is  no  doubt  hampered  in  a 
thousand  ways.  The  single  employer  or  capitalist  is 
often  almost  as  powerless  to  alter  the  system  of  which 
he  is  a  part  as  is  a  labourer.  When  f  the  system  ’ 
makes  it  necessary  for  him  to  do  what  his  conscience 
condemns,  he  can  of  course,  with  whatever  difficulty, 
refuse  to  do  it,  and  suffer  the  financial  loss  or  ruin 
involved.  We  have  almost  dropped  out  of  our 
current  Christian  teaching  the  idea  that  a  Christian 
may  be  called  upon  to  make  any  great  financial  or 
other  sacrifice  for  conscience’  sake.  But  it  is  doubtful 
whether  any  more  effective  instrument  of  reform  in 
our  industrial  or  financial  system  could  be  found  than 
the  multiplication  of  such  protests  of  the  individual 
conscience  against  wrong,  which  at  present  are  made 
but  rarely.  We  believe  that  nothing  would  so  effectu¬ 
ally  stir  the  common  conscience  as  such  examples  of 
splendid  renunciation. 

IV.  The  Duty  of  the  Christian  as  Citizen. — But 
undoubtedly,  as  we  have  said,  the  individual  by  his 
private  action  is  able  to  do  little  to  alter  what  is 
amiss.  The  law  must  help — that  is  the  expressed 
will  and  power  of  the  whole  community ;  and  all 


CHURCH  ON  ECONOMIC  SUBJECTS  307 

serious  students  of  society  are  at  the  present  time 
ready  to  recognize  this.  Hardly  any  one  could  be 
found  to  advocate  a  return  to  the  1  laissez  faire  ’ 
policy  of  the  days  preceding  the  Factory  Acts.  Here 
then  we  touch  a  new  department  of  duty.  The 
individual  Christian  is  also  a  citizen.  As  a  citizen  he 
must  inform  himself  on  economic  matters  and  take 
his  share  in  public  service. 

Thus  (1)  he  must  support  the  existing  law  in  the 
restrictions  which  it  imposes  upon  the  methods 
actually  pursued  in  the  production  of  wealth. 

At  present  we  are,  as  a  nation,  much  more  jealous 
for  the  maintenance  of  the  laws  which  exist  for  the 
protection  of  property  than  of  those  which  exist  for 
the  protection  of  the  worker.  These  latter  are  at 
present  in  many  cases  ignored  or  violated — through 
the  fault  both  of  employers  and  of  the  workers  them¬ 
selves.  But  they  embody  the  attempt  of  our  society 
as  a  whole  to  protect  its  weak  and  ignorant  members 
against  others  and  against  themselves.  They  are  thus 
among  the  most  important  elements  in  our  legislation, 
and  what  is  necessary  is  that  society  as  a  whole 
should  rally  to  their  support,  for  in  fact  it  is  the 
absence  of  a  sufficient  public  opinion  which  often 
makes  them  a  dead  letter.  In  this  matter  the 
Church  has  the  responsibility  (which  it  has  certainly 
not  realized  hitherto)  of  teaching  its  members  their 
duty  as  individuals.  And  moreover  it  has  at  its 
disposal  a  parochial  machinery  extending  all  over 
the  land  which,  valuable  as  it  is  at  present,  might 
be  made  much  more  valuable  if  there  were  a  wider 
diffusion  among  its  workers  of  necessary  information. 
The  district  visitors  who  are  at  work  in  almost  all 


3  o8  MORAL  WITNESS  OF  THE 


parishes  of  our  Church  might,  if  properly  instructed  in 
the  rudiments  of  industrial  and  sanitary  law,  without 
unwelcome  interference,  do  a  great  deal  to  promote 
its  observance  and  to  defend  the  poor  against  their 
own  carelessness  and  ignorance. 

(2)  But  the  maintenance  of  the  existing  law  is 
only  one  aspect  of  the  Christian  man’s  duty  as  a 
citizen.  It  is  time,  we  think,  that  the  Christian 
Church  should  make  clear  to  itself  the  nature  of  the 
demand  for  the  reconstruction  of  society  which  is 
at  present  urged  upon  us.  Behind  the  more  technical 
(industrial  and  political)  proposals,  lies  a  fundamental 
appeal  for  justice,  which  the  Christian  Church  cannot 
ignore.  It  is  bound  to  make  a  much  more  thorough 
endeavour  than  it  has  yet  made  to  appreciate  this 
appeal  in  all  its  bearings,  and  to  consider  whether 
the  charge  made  against  the  present  constitution 
and  principles  of  the  industrial  world,  and  the  present 
division  of  the  profits  of  industry,  is  a  just  charge. 
Certainly  the  Christian  society  is  competent  to  deal 
with  the  fundamental  moral  question,  and  is  bound 
to  press  upon  its  members  the  duty  of  facing  it. 

Then,  in  consequence  of  such  deepened  reflection 
upon  the  fundamental  moral  issue,  it  is  undoubtedly 
the  case  that  we  shall  need  an  advance  in  our  present 
law  touching  social  and  industrial  problems.  It 
is  time,  we  think,  that  the  Christian  conscience  of  the 
country  voted  urgency  among  parliamentary  and 
municipal  questions  for  all  the  group  of  problems 
which  concern  the  grossly  unequal  distribution  of 
wealth  and  well-being  ;  the  waste  of  life  and  capacity 
through  lack  of  proper  nourishment  and  training  ; 
the  sweating  of  women’s  and  children’s  labour  ;  the 


CHURCH  ON  ECONOMIC  SUBJECTS  309 

deficiency,  in  the  surroundings  of  so  many,  of  those 
things  which  are  the  ordinary  essentials  of  physical 
and  moral  well-being. 

We  do  not  desire  that  the  Church  as  a  body  should 
take  a  side  with  this  or  that  political  party  ;  nor, 
again,  that  the  Church  should  favour  any  one  class. 
We  would  have  it  apply  its  moral  teaching  to  all 
classes  indifferently,  to  the  labourer  as  to  the  employer. 
There  is  as  much  need  to  teach  the  workman  the 
duty  of  conscientious  and  efficient  work,  as  to  teach 
the  employer  his  responsibility  in  dealing  with  his 
workmen ;  and  there  is  perhaps  quite  as  much 
misuse  of  money  at  the  present  time  among  the  poor 
as  among  the  rich,  relatively  to  what  they  receive. 
But  with  whatever  class  the  Church  is  dealing,  we 
are  convinced  that  it  has  a  teaching  which  it  ought 
to  give  on  all  matters  which  concern  the  acquisition 
and  distribution  of  wealth,  in  its  bearing  on  human 
lives  ;  and  that  this  teaching  involves  not  only 
private  effort,  but  municipal  and  political  reforms. 
Thus  we  want  the  Church  as  a  body  to  come  forward 
to  the  support  of  such  legislation  as  embodies  or 
tends  to  render  more  practicable  the  Christian  view 
of  the  worth  and  meaning  of  human  life,  and  the 
belief  in  the  divine  principle  of  justice. 

(3)  It  is  no  doubt  the  case  that  any  industrial 
readjustment  may  involve  an  increase  in  the  financial 
burden  upon  the  community,  temporary  or  permanent. 
This  is  a  complicated  question.  It  will  of  course  be 
urged  that  a  better  industrial  system  will,  in  the 
long  run,  increase  and  not  diminish  the  wealth  of 
the  community.  But  this  question  we  do  not  touch. 
Only  we  are  sure  that  for  the  Christian  citizen  there 


3 IO 


MORAL  WITNESS  OF  THE 


are  public  objects  for  the  attainment  of  which  public 
expenditure  is  to  be  accepted  voluntarily  and  not 
grudgingly. 

Thus  we  want  ever)7  Christian  to  set  himself  against 
the  false  but  very  prevalent  view  that  the  contribu¬ 
tions  from  income  which  are  required  of  every 
citizen  for  public  purposes  are  on  the  whole  to  be 
regarded  as  burdens  which  it  is  natural  to  resent, 
and  even,  where  possible,  to  evade.  The  Christian 
conscience  ought  surely  to  approve  in  principle  of  a 
large  public  expenditure  on  objects  which  are  cal¬ 
culated  to  strengthen  and  enrich  the  common  life. 

We  cannot  leave  this  part  of  the  subject  without 
urging  that  the  Christian,  and,  we  must  add,  more 
particularly  the  Churchman,  ought  to  be  ready  to 
make  the  sacrifices  of  various  kinds  which  are  involved 
in  standing  for,  and  holding,  municipal  and  public 
offices  ;  and  whether  as  a  voter,  or  himself  an  officer 
of  the  community,  we  must  look  to  him  to  maintain 
the  fundamentally  Christian  principle  as  to  the 
woith  of  human  life,  and  as  to  the  duty  of  the  whole 
community  towards  its  weakest  members. 

(4)  Finally,  we  feel  that  the  existing  methods  by 
which  the  Church  relieves  the  poor — that  is,  the 
administration  of  ‘  charity  ’  by  the  Church,  as  by 
Christian  bodies  generally — has  been  shown  in  its 
results  to  be  singularly  unproductive  of  permanent 
good.  ‘  As  regards  the  poor,  the  results  have  not 
proved  satisfactory  in  the  past,  and  neither  response 
nor  result  are  greatly  different  now.’ 1  On  the  other 

1  Booth’s  Life  and  Labour,  3rd  Series,  vol.  vii.,  pp.  406  ff. 
The  agreement  among  men  of  experience  on  this  subject 
is  very  impressive. 


CHURCH  ON  ECONOMIC  SUBJECTS  3 1  I 

hand  the  existing  system  is  responsible  for  much 
alienation  from  the  Church,  and  from  religious 
worship,  of  self-respecting  workers,  who  are  afraid  of 
being  supposed  to  come  ‘  for  what  they  can  get.’ 
We  think  that  such  considerations  as  we  have  urged 
above  will  tend,  not  indeed  to  make  Christians  dis¬ 
parage  or  neglect  the  duty  and  privilege  of  almsgiving, 
but  to  make  them  feel  that  something  more  is  wanted 
than  improvements  in  our  methods  of  administering 
charitable  relief.  We  have  to  go  deeper  to  the 
grounds  of  the  existing  misery  and  want  and  un¬ 
employment  ;  and,  while  we  do  our  best  to  deal 
with  the  present  distress,  direct  our  chief  attention 
towards  furthering  the  reorganization  of  society 
on  such  principles  of  justice  as  will  tend  to  reduce 
poverty  and  misery  in  the  future  to  more  manageable 
proportions. 


Printed  by  Haiell,  Watson  &  Viney,  Li.,  London  and  Aylesbury,  England. 


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